Japanese reactor crisis

[AtLast]

Originally Posted by Medusa

Ohhh crap. Trying not to wring my hands but just heard on CNN that the second reactor had an explosion and that they think the containment vessle has been ruptured and that radioactive material may be leaking out.
On the surface I get what this means, but do we have a way of determining how much material will leak and how fast? An equation that says something like "Size of Vessel x temperature of exposed fuel rods x length of exposure = amount of radiation that will escape"? And further, what is the area that will be affected?

And would there be other factors that would affect how much and how long radiation will leak? Like, and pardon my ignorance here, if the temperature is cold outside vs hot and humid, does that make a difference? Does snow help drop that radiation to the ground? What if it rains?

(just call me chicken little)

You are not being chicken. We should be asking questions and researching about what all of this could mean. I was feeling much more reassured with info from top nuclear power scientists and engineers just yesterday about containment "vessels" and buildings. Unfortunately, the news thus far about this situation goes beyond the parameters some of these folks talked about and into much more serious scenarios- some unknown or un-chartered territory (just like the Gulf deep water oil spill).

Waiting for the current experts to weigh in instead of the news media per se. Also, when these plants were built and went online is significant in terms of the possible dangers. Some of the hype is not helping in terms of fear factors. Japan has some of the worlds leading people in their nuclear power plant development and research.

Yes, as in past, I think about the fact that these kinds of natural disasters can push the envelope past the theory behind construction and management of these plants into mother nature being the one with the final say- or human error pushing it (hope the containment cement was mixed properly and inspected properly, for example) . Yet, there are people dealing with this that have a lot at stake including millions of their country-people.