Information about the incident at the Fukushima Nuclear Plants in Japan hosted by http://web.mit.edu/nse/ :: Maintained by the students of the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT.

Japanese engineers are struggling to gain control of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, which was seriously damaged by a March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Two of the six reactors at the plant, operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), are considered stable but the other four are volatile.

Following are some questions and answers about efforts to end the world's worst nuclear crisis since the 1986 Chernobyl accident:

This is an unusually levelheaded analysis of the situation, especially compared to all the hysterical handwaving we have seen in Western mainstream media lately.

More than 10,000 people have died in the Japanese tsunami and the survivors are cold and hungry. But the media concentrate on nuclear radiation from which no-one has died - and is unlikely to.

Worst of all, the reporting has put the focus entirely on the Fukushima nuclear plant. As worrisome as the issue is, it has been completely blown out of proportion, with talk of meltdown and massive destruction. The tragedy is that the victims of the earthquake and tsunami are all but forgotten at times. While the world turns away to ponder its own nuclear policies — which, for better or for worse, are far from urgent — people are starving and dying after having survived the disaster itself.

The nuclear plant story is exciting and dramatic and is easy to exaggerate, but it will quickly wear thin as the plant cools and the international public realizes that the fears were deliberately whipped up. By then, it could be far too late for many survivors.

A top official at Japan's nuclear-safety regulatory agency sees no slowing in the country's campaign to expand atomic power, despite the battle to contain the world's worst nuclear crisis in 25 years, saying in an interview that the alternative is "blackouts."

"There aren't that many easy alternatives available for us," said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a former trade negotiator tapped to help deal with the Fukushima nuclear crisis, on Wednesday. "Japan couldn't go forward without nuclear power in order to meet its demand for energy today," he said. About 30% of Japan's electricity output comes from nuclear, and the government has set the goal of increasing that to 40% by 2020.

Just a month before a powerful earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima Daiichi plant at the center of Japan’s nuclear crisis, government regulators approved a 10-year extension for the oldest of the six reactors at the power station despite warnings about its safety.

The regulatory committee reviewing extensions pointed to stress cracks in the backup diesel-powered generators at Reactor No. 1 at the Daiichi plant, according to a summary of its deliberations that was posted on the Web site of Japan’s nuclear regulatory agency after each meeting. The cracks made the engines vulnerable to corrosion from seawater and rainwater. The generators are thought to have been knocked out by the tsunami, shutting down the reactor’s vital cooling system.

A crappy old plant with inadequate safety features was hit by a monster earthquake and a vast tsunami. The electricity supply failed, knocking out the cooling system. The reactors began to explode and melt down. The disaster exposed a familiar legacy of poor design and corner-cutting. Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation.

Some greens have wildly exaggerated the dangers of radioactive pollution. For a clearer view, look at the graphic published by xkcd.com. It shows that the average total dose from the Three Mile Island disaster for someone living within 10 miles of the plant was one 625th of the maximum yearly amount permitted for US radiation workers. This, in turn, is half of the lowest one-year dose clearly linked to an increased cancer risk, which, in its turn, is one 80th of an invariably fatal exposure. I'm not proposing complacency here. I am proposing perspective.

The unfolding disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant follows decades of falsified safety reports, fatal accidents and underestimated earthquake risk in Japan’s atomic power industry.

...

Nuclear engineers and academics who have worked in Japan’s atomic power industry spoke in interviews of a history of accidents, faked reports and inaction by a succession of Liberal Democratic Party governments that ran Japan for nearly all of the postwar period.

In summary it is looking more and more probable that the death and injury toll from the Fukushima quake strike will be limited to the one worker killed in a crane accident and others hurt by the quake and subsequent explosions at the site, perhaps with some very minimal long-term radiation effects among site workers. All being well, nobody else will have their health damaged in any way, and prospects are good that most or all of the current evacuation zone will be re-opened in a reasonable amount of time.

This article, unusally level-headed for a Western media outlet, was posted yesterday afternoon. To my knowledge, there is no more cause for pessimism now than it was then.

I am writing this text (Mar 12) to give you some peace of mind regarding some of the troubles in Japan, that is the safety of Japan’s nuclear reactors. Up front, the situation is serious, but under control. And this text is long! But you will know more about nuclear power plants after reading it than all journalists on this planet put together.

There was and will *not* be any significant release of radioactivity.

By “significant” I mean a level of radiation of more than what you would receive on – say – a long distance flight, or drinking a glass of beer that comes from certain areas with high levels of natural background radiation.