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This is an interesting link. Hopefully you can convert it to English. Google offered me a translation. According to this page, right now if I am reading it correctly.

Reactor 1 - 27.5 % of the Fuel Rods in Reactor 1 are exposed to atmosphere. About 1.65 Meters of rods.

Reactor 2 - 35.0 % of the Fuel Rods in Reactor 2 are exposed to atmosphere. About 2.10 Meters of rods. That exposure increased by 10 % on April 17th 2011

Reactor 3 - 37.5 % of the Fuel Rods in Reactor 3 are exposed to atmosphere. About 2.25 Meters of rods.

The exposure of nuclear reactor fuel rods.

This link explains why Reactor 2 had a 10 % increase in Fuel rod exposure on April 17th. Looks like a 2,000 mm drop in water level occurred. Since temperature did not increase, perhaps that extra 10 % was already melted ?

The reactor water level

So long as you keep in mind my “knowledge” of this sort of thing is what any “hairy-knuckled” company tech rep has to pick up to do their job........

From my, (admittedly spotty/old/basic) understanding of LW reactors rod exposure doesn’t pose a “greater danger” so long as they are below the cladding’s melt/burn point. Exposure attenuates the slow neutron reacton. Indeed, one cooling solution might just be to inject/spray liquid CO2 on the exposed rods - provided the thermal shock won’t create more problems.

What TECO really needs is to get access to the containment and circ/cooling pumps/valving. With this they could control residual heat via the condensors without any serious environmental penality.

I think whats hard for many - even those in the industry - is the massive amounts of residual heat that has to be dealt with after “scramming” one of these units. >PS