DiabloFans

Well, thats in terms of radiation released, which, don't get me wrong, is obviously an important factor. But there was no explosion involved, and a rating of 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale just means 'Major Accident' which obviously leaves a lot of room as to exactly how serious the event is. Despite the comparison, I doubt the current Japanese crisis will end up being as serious as Chernobyl.

Well as I said before, water is pretty much the most effective coolant that can be used in the amounts they need. The rods aren't anywhere close to being cooled, but there's no way they can get any hotter than they currently are. And I don't know the specifics of the safety concerns, but I know that its certainly not a cutting-edge nuclear plant.

Yea, its an older plant that has had safety concerns even before this earthquake. And they have failsafes, but the tsunami flooded them and cut off power to the plant's cooling system, which apparently has recently been linked back up again. But in the end, worst case scenario isn't another Chernobyl. If that was going to happen it would've already. The plant is no longer operational and as such the rods can't heat up again, and the worst possible thing is more and more radiation. Which is obviously very bad and very serious, but its not going to cause an explosion. The explosions that happened before were caused by a build up of hydrogen, not something to do with the fuel rods.

I wasn't trying to imply that he doesn't know anything about it, I'm just saying that its not his specific field. I'm sure he knows a great deal about it though. The main reason I was pointing that out is because I disagree with his point that Japan needs to treat this in any way like Chernobyl, and that the reason that Russia dumped all that cement and everything on the Chernobyl plant was because it didn't have a secondary containment dome, which is standard on all nuclear plants nowadays.

Well for one, string theory has much more to do with astronomy than nuclear physics. And the reason they aren't doing the same thing as at Chernobyl is because they actually had a containment dome in the first place, so they don't have to make a makeshift one after the disaster. The plant at Chernobyl was extremely unsafe, and thats why the situation got so out of hand.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704893604576198421680697248.html?mod=djemWMP_h
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2011/0318/At-Japan-s-radiation-checkpoints-relief-when-tests-are-clean

Quote from Daemaro

Who's to say it won't get worse though? All attempts to cool the cores so far have failed and now they've resorted to dumping in sea water via aircraft. Seems pretty last resort to me.

Water is one of the most effective coolants other than the plant's own cooling system, which failed because of the tsunami. And it won't get worse simply because the plant is shut off, so the only possibility is for more radiation leaks. Which is very, very bad, but far from the explosion scenario that happened at Chernobyl.

During Chernobyl, the amount of radiation found in other areas was miniscule but widespread. Theres no way that this nuclear crisis would somehow produce more radiation than Chernobyl, so its really not an issue for anywhere but Japan and possibly a small surrounding area.

Well for one they accepted help from the US, but the US isn't allowing their troops within a certain radius of the plant because of radiation concerns, and the help they were offering is equipment like water pumps and such.

And the reason this is "taking longer" than Chernobyl is because its being better contained than Chernobyl. When the plant in Chernobyl blew up it was because it happened so suddenly and there were no successful efforts to contain it. Not to mention that theres no way this ends up like Chernobyl, and the worst case scenario is essentially more radiation leaking. Not to mention that Chernobyl in no way sealed itself off. That was a large part of the problem.

I personally cannot imagine that with all the know-how in the world today, combined with the time they've had, nobody will be able to come up with a solution to contain this situation.

Well you could say the same thing about world hunger and war, but those things still happen. Its an almost unprecedented situation (Three Mile Island was basically nothing, and Chernobyl happened so fast and the plant was so different that there's not much to learn from it since they already have contained it beyond that point). "All the know-how in the world" has lead to the solution of dumping a bunch of water on it, but really in that case you just have to hope that it doesn't heat up faster than the water cools it off.

If anything I'd say its being overplayed. There's been no fatalities, and its a large radiation leak, which is terrible, but I don't think that it really has as much of an effect on nuclear power in general as people are making it seem. Its the 5th most powerful recorded earthquake. Of course things are going to go terribly wrong. The plant was only safe up to something like an 8.0 earthquake, and there were concerns about the plant's safety before the earthquake, so a better design could have prevented some of these problems. And for the record, the reason the plant isn't able to cool itself as designed is because the tsunami flooded its emergency generators that normally cool the fuel rods.