[meatloaf]

Revel. look at the containment building size versus the reactor in the picture I posted. If you actually filled the building up to the reactor, you'd end up still cooling the reactor. Neither the primary containment nor the reactor at any of the Japanese plants have been breached. The news went apesh!t over the damage of something which is somewhat like a pole building built on top of the primary containment. If you had any idea of the wall thickness of the piping in a nuke plant, you'd understand. Here's another photo to show how massive a containment building is compared to the size of the reactor. A containment building is designed to withstand an airliner crashing into it without being breached. It is also designed to shrug off a tornado.

[Revel]

“Neither the primary containment nor the reactor at any of the Japanese plants have been breached.”

Many of the original reports from Tepco stated that the primary containment on one or more reactors had appeared to have been breached. I believe that to be the case no mater what they say now. Otherwise you would have to believe that all the radiation is coming from the spend fuel pools or a small amount of venting. In the beginning the fool pools would have been emitting almost no radiation. Yet much was found. More than I believe can be explained by the venting. That is if you believe all the people here at the time that said the venting was harmless.

Thanks for your clarification on the outer containment’s. It does add another dimension to my thinking. Yet even with that there is no way to keep running water in without venting. Air pressure alone would prevent that. And there is still a limit to what that containment can hold. And they are really pouring it in.

[winoneforthegipper]

What that picture does not show is the fore structure that contains the housing for the spent fuel rods. That is the critical element in what is going on at Fukushima.

[Smokin' Joe]

Wow! I remember clapboard siding on site shacks like that!

That was before the Spotted Owls wiped out the timber industry...

Just saying, decisions made at the height of panic affect us all far beyond the moment.

Great pic.