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Bellum A Project of The Stanford Review. The Yamato Spirit: Japanese Engineers Volunteering to Fight Meltdown (UPDATED) March 15th, 2011 "TEPCO is reportedly refusing to accept volunteers under the age of 50, or who have small children as dependents. The reason for this is that the risk of developing cancer as a result of this kind of work is extremely high. We cannot confirm these rumors, but we encourage major media with resources on the ground to verify this if they can." bellum.stanfordreview.org

I apologize if I'm being abrupt and callous, the fact that they haven't evacuated these people is really making me "red in the face mad"

@salvador (opion) posed the same question eairlier, look at the height of the plume from #3 and the apparent energy... size of what was still falling back to earth... plume appeared 3 times higher than the towers which are twice the height of the buildings... of couse this is only estimate going off vidieo... any experts out their that can shed light on why #3 went up with such a force.. also building #1 blew out sideways more it looks like from the videio

@Patrick, don't apologize for stating how you feel, I swear every single time I hear the words "no immediate health risk" I want to reach through the computer/tv and shake some sense into whoever said it.

Whoever posted this link ( db.eurad.uni-koeln.de ) earlier, those dispersal patterns gifs are amazing and eerie and scary and worth the time to peruse.

Bellum "The current events are easily the largest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, itself the largest nuclear disaster in history. It is currently, I think, less hazardous than the Windscale fire of 1957 (yeah, I know you’ve never heard of it), which led to the release of much more radiation than is currently happening and, as far as I can tell baring a further revelation, going to happen." bellum.stanfordreview.org

Does anyone know how many years into cool down these spent rods were and how long a rod of new fuel takes to become spent because there are UNspent rods in one pool and the others could take up to 30 years to cool. That's a hell of a lot of volunteers spraying a hell of a lot of water!!

@salvador me also, something is not right with that "explosion" in my opion. excuse my spelling but i keep hiitng wrong key and it send the comment

Hi all, been out all day, so well behind things here. Anyone know if the plant's been evacuated of workers? I just half-heard a BBC report saying something to that effect I believe (unless it was just re-churned old news - wouldn't be a first!). Great if someone could clarify please, to save me digging around?

@Patrick Kelley if you were talking about people on north West, with since 12 days are in places which have been sown by every mesurement, japanese, US, etc, as too bad for health, yes, this also make me mad. Fot Tepco, what make me made is that is the POOREST workers who seem to be in the frontline, look back at kyodo news.. Just because they are contractant of third parties. Today, it's not the time to make judgment, but I hope we will one day be able to judge the CEO team, who send the poorest, to save their high gages.

@HNK listener, I have looked at this before, but I am not a nuclear engineer, I just have a breadth of knowledge on molecular chemistry, they overlap, but do not coincide. The impossible is happening, we can't rule anything out, including things like "new nuclides" Essentially we are taking a bowl of the most volitile stuff in the universe and mixing it with all kinds of other stuff. This is like one huge science experiment. We have an idea of what happens in nuclear criticallity, but due to the dangerous levels of radiation we have not studied these kinds of chemical reactions in any kind of depth.

@radioguy Thanks, sorry was just watching another Tsunami video.they keep coming out.

sorry, I need to leave, our national french network have not corrected their mistake on micro and millisiverts... that n

@marie rich ...but sadly it is clear that none of the lay news outlets have the technical expertise to ask the right questions, or even know when they don't understand something. Whereas the technical outlets are all associated in one way or another with the nuclear industry, and thus mostly seem to minimise the problem.

@Joshua Diamond Which is why we are doing this, eh?

@Future Isnow -- sorry to hear that it is not just the US which has not managed to understand the metric system :(

@radioguy any dispersal of radiation that even looks like any of those images will not have any major impact on most countries- this is a study on the Indian Point power plant, which I live 30 miles from, and how far out people would be impacted. Within 500 miles there will be serious consequences but outside of that there will be little effect- however, people will always take little impacts and turn them into life changing events. www.usatoday.com

@marie rich -- yeah but the echo chamber here is rather obvious, and seems to foster some pretty unlikely theories...

@John all reports from JIAF are prefaced with (Estimated by JAIF), I think most of their information is gleaned from the media/press releases, someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

@Joshua Diamond oh, if it's worldwild, and if the mistake have happen in US too, so, it's not a mistake :(

@joshua diamond: it is really saddening to see the broadcaster asking bill nye if they could repair a reactor breach, and his reply..no. it's as if they think if they only had home depot near by they could get some duct tape and great stuff and patch it right up.

@Jill in Sweden I'll try to find a link