To the Japanese at Square-Enix: Nobuo Uematsu?

[Randwolf]

I live near 3 Mile Island and this is actually the first time I read up on what a meltdown entails. Scary? Yes. But, with the new designs, it appears that it would not ruin as much area as Chernobyl or even be as significant as 3 Mile Island. At least how it appears. Don't want to make light of it until it is under control.

[Mirage]

In fact, the chernobyl incident were also largely because of human errors. Manual overrides of certain fail-safes were performed because "some guys" wanted to do tests/drills or something. Then it didn't help that when the stuff started screwing up, the reactor's design actually made the process increase in power output. In more recent designs, even if you did turn off all failsafes, the reactors couldn't "explode" like chernobyl did, and there wouldn't be a huge, incredibly hot fire because the materials that caused this in chernobyl aren't used in new reactors.

Last i heard, the worst case scenario for the reactor in question now, is that an area of up to 2-3 km away from the reactor would be uninhabitable for a few decades. The radioactive materials that could be spread have a half-life of about 30 years.

[Moink]

Three Mile Island 2 had what is considered a partial meltdown and was considered a level 5 at INES (Accident with wider consequences)

Fukushima Daiichi 1 is also experiencing this as a partial meltdown if it stops now and level 4 at INES (Accident with local consequences)

Also TEPCO has not been very reliable lately. If deaths result from the leak, it will easily jump to level 5.

[Moink]

In fact, the chernobyl incident were also largely because of human errors. Manual overrides of certain fail-safes were performed because "some guys" wanted to do tests/drills or something. Then it didn't help that when the stuff started screwing up, the reactor's design actually made the process increase in power output. In more recent designs, even if you did turn off all failsafes, the reactors couldn't "explode" like chernobyl did, and there wouldn't be a huge, incredibly hot fire because the materials that caused this in chernobyl aren't used in new reactors.

Last i heard, the worst case scenario for the reactor in question now, is that an area of up to 2-3 km away from the reactor would be uninhabitable for a few decades. The radioactive materials that could be spread have a half-life of about 30 years.

Chernobyl had flaws all the way to constructing the facillity. Costs were cut and was built rather fast... Human error was only a fraction of the of the pie. That site specifically still remains largely radioactive and the current "tomb" is decaying because of the radiation. A new tomb is being constructed offsite to be trollied over so the reactor can begin to be dismantled.

[Starcade]

I don't think anyone said everyone at SE were safe, only Nobuo's company.

Separate story, but IGN has been notified by Square-Enix (IGN was doing a sweep of the Japanese game companies for this information) that everyone is accounted for and safe.

[Dreimar]

Alert and "safe" distance from the power plant already upgraded from 5 to 10 then 20 km away..
Let's hope that all of them will be fine :|

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KzAB...eature=related

kinda scaring

[Alhanelem]

I somewhat have to wonder why nuclear facilities were built so close to the "ring of fire" (of seismic and volcanic activity). Granted, the structures are built to withstand even powerful earthquakes, but there is little if anything man can build to stop a tsunami.

The last report I saw indicated that they expect that they can prevent or contain the meltdown, but there was no guarantee. Three reactors were in a safe shutdown state, two were reported to have not enough cooling capacity and then the 1 reactor that is in danger of meltdown. They're supposed to be pumping sea water and boron into the containment structures in an effort to cool the reactors.

Apparently the force of the quake shifted the planet's axis by about 10 centimeters and actually moved the entire main island of Japan a distance of about 8 feet.

[Moink]

Reactor 1 was already in a state of partial meltdown. Sea water and boron doesn't stop it from melting down if it has already begun. It is a latch ditch effort and permanently disables the reactor but will probably not work due to the amount of heat involved.

@Dreimar: The explosion you're watching isn't a meltdown but an excessively high amount Hydron built up within the cooling tower from the evaporation of the water when the attempt to release the pressure to the reactor was too much. The containment field so far has held up with both the melt down and cooling tower explosion.

Reactor 3 is no longer recieving coolant and last I heard was in the process of melting down. Let's all hope that both these containment fields hold the core from a major catastrophe