OK so lets say that after all melts the vessel holding this is compromised...and it cannot be contained as hoped. Having used Boric and other elements to stop the process...wouldn't there be little actual radiation left to damage as extensively as some indicate?
“OK so lets say that after all melts the vessel holding this is compromised...and it cannot be contained as hoped. Having used Boric and other elements to stop the process...wouldn’t there be little actual radiation left to damage as extensively as some indicate?”
As I understand it, Boric acid reduces the danger of the nuclear material reaching critical mass. That is, of nuclear explosion. But that has never been much of an issue here anyway. The worst case is if the concrete containment is breached after a meltdown, a lot of somewhat enriched Uranium Oxide would enter the environment in large concentrations. I don’t think boric acid changes that. And that would be a bad thing.
But to date, this looks nothing like Chernobyl, where a crappy communist containment vessel burst. From Wikipedia: “According to a report released by the Chernobyl Forum ... the disaster killed twenty-eight persons due to acute radiation syndrome,[4] could possibly result in up to four thousand fatal cancers at an unknown time in the future[5] and required the permanent evacuation of an exclusion zone around the reactor. The Chernobyl plant had containment buildings not constructed to a correct standard, allowing the concrete containment cap on the reactor to be ejected in the explosion.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_meltdown
To date, the Japanese situation looks more like three mile island, where the melted core was completely contained inside the containment vessel. A disaster for the company that loses the reactor and has to clean it up. But not a great public disaster.
It is, however, a huge !wooppee!! party for the American media, who would like to force America to rationing and solar energy. Nuclear power is a big threat to that goal. The disinformation you are seeing and the scary story stuff is designed to that end. Most reporters don’t seem to understand the difference between a core meltdown (three mile island) and a breach of the containment vessel (chernobyl). Or they want to deliberately conflate the issues to the public.
The interesting thing is the laser focus of the media on a situation that at worst will kill far fewer people than the earthquake and tsunami (using the Chernobyl numbers as a guide). The natural forces in Japan have already caused a far bigger disaster than the nukes can possible cause.