Technicians are battling to stabilise a third reactor at a quake-stricken Japanese nuclear plant, which has been rocked by a second blast in three days.<\/p>\n
The Fukushima Daiichi plant’s operators have resumed pumping seawater into reactor 2 after a cooling system broke. They warned of a possible meltdown when the fuel rods became exposed after the pump stopped as its fuel ran out.<\/p>\n
A cooling system breakdown preceded explosions at the plant’s reactor 3 on Monday and reactor 1 on Saturday.<\/p>\n
BBC environmental correspondent Richard Black provides this analysis:<\/p>\n
The fuel rod exposure at Fukushima Daiichi number 2 reactor is potentially the most serious event so far at the plant.<\/p>\n
A local government official confirmed the fuel rods were at one point largely, if not totally exposed; but we do not know for how long.<\/p>\n
Without coolant around the rods, temperatures can rise to hundreds of degrees Celsius, almost certainly resulting in some melting.<\/p>\n
This opens the possibility of a serious meltdown – where molten, highly radioactive reactor core falls through the floor of the containment vessel and into the ground underneath.<\/p>\n
However, engineers appear to have restored some water flow into the reactor vessel and if they are successful, temperatures will begin to fall again rapidly. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n
More at BBC<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Technicians are battling to stabilise a third reactor at a quake-stricken Japanese nuclear plant, which has been rocked by a second blast in three days. The Fukushima Daiichi plant’s operators have resumed pumping seawater into reactor 2 after a cooling system broke. They warned of a possible meltdown when the fuel rods became exposed after … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35698"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35698\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}