One point of interest is the concept of "melt down".
A "melt down" is the ultimate sin of the nuclear industry - made famous by Jane Fonda in 1979 in the movie "The China Syndrome". The idea, of course, is that when the nuclear reactor insides melt down into a pool of seething hot radioactive mess the molten mess then proceeds to burn through the bottom of the reactor containment vessel and head straight for China. This was also the fear of most 1970's environmentalists protesting these plants at the time.
No one wants to be associated with a "melt down".
Number two on the list of evil sins is "core breach" or "containment failure". In the US (unlike Russia) all reactors have a "containment dome" surrounding them. Unlike Fukushima where you see the innards of the reactors systems inside the exploded outer building shell US reactors are built inside a giant reinforced concrete dome. The idea being that should something like Fukushima happen here the explosive hydrogen gas, radioactive steam, etc. would all be "contained" in the dome. (Though I doubt having a dome full of radioactive water, steam and explosive hydrogen would be any easier to manage.) Obviously this system is also designed to contain things like radioactive Iodine, Cesium, Uranium and Plutonium should there be problems.
So what do we see at Fukushima?
Well, first of all, no one will ever admit to any of the big nuclear sins - that would be catastrophic - both in terms of panic and in terms of finances.
No, instead we get news information leaking out bit by bit - like a leaky faucet.
So let's look at today's evidence: Plutonium in the soil.
The first question you have to ask is "how did it get there?" Of course its only "a tiny amount" and "not dangerous"…
But plutonium does not occur on earth naturally - its a man made element - bred inside nuclear reactors (reactor number 3 in Fukushima). So if its not inside the reactor any more it must have gotten out somehow…?
How could it do that? Well no one is admitting to a "containment breach" - but let's look further.
If you read the news reports they all talk about radioactive water (at a very high level) in the basements of the reactor buildings. Now, taking their word that there was no "containment breach", we read that there may be problems with the cooling systems (looking at the pictures I have been posting its hard to imagine how much of anything would be functioning inside the damaged reactor buildings, much less complete cooling systems). They admit here and there that their might be some "problems" with the cooling systems, the pumps, the pipes, and so on. Well - if water and plutonium is leaking out I would agree there must be a problem somewhere.
So while the reactor containment might not have failed (with a hole or other problem) apparently that's not the same as the pipe and things connected to the reactor containment failing. They keep pumping water (sea and fresh) into the reactors to "cool" them. Where does it go?
Now apparently the distinction of molten fuel burning down through the containment versus dribbling out through broken pipes is rather a fine point.
The reactor building explodes, the piping, pumps and cooling systems fail, water and plutonium leaks out - but, the reactor containment doesn't fail. (Apparently the MOX plutonium/uranium fuel has also come out of the fuel rods in reactor number 3. Its normally inside a pellet that's inside a metal fuel rod. The halflife of Plutonium-239 in MOX is 24,000 years and just a few milligrams of P-239 escaping into the atmosphere will contaminate whatever it falls on for tens of thousands of years.) So it seems that the insides of the reactor systems and the containment might be described as "in disarray" but don't worry - no big sins have been committed.
Perhaps fairies transported it to the outside...
I suspect that as time goes on all of the gory details of a "containment breach" and "melt down" will leak out (again no pun intended) - but it will be done on Friday night at 11:00 PM after something else happens so that the details will be lost on the public.
Clean, safe nuclear energy.
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