I am surprised on how long those rods take to cool down - wow

No sh!t. I am continually thinking the same thing Carp. It goes beyond that, there are spent fuel pools at the plant (and at every plant in the world, almost always in great excess of how much they were designed to hold) that have to be cooled down even more for years. That is just how hot these babies get. This is one of the major concerns of experts is how this massive amount of spent but still hot rods will weather all of this.

I must say, the media was pissing me off, but ever since the 7 rating, most every article I have read has been very diplomatic about why it is now a 7. More was released in the first few days than previously thought. Ironicicically, this means that all those foreigners who escaped b/c they weren't sure Tokyo was safe still got a few good whiffs of that stuff before they managed to get the hell of out of Dodge.

Maybe they should more information revealed about this to the people living there.My wife aunt lives there in Fukishima and says the Government is not revealing hardly any information to her family what is happening day by day.

Still here, still being careful. Tokyo has been back down to the upper ranges of "normal radiation" for about a week or .079ish microsieverts per hour. Before this we had ranges from about .040 - .115 with a few short points in time here and there where they spiked some. Of course some areas closer to the plant where people are still living are significantly higher but should have "no immediate effects on health" which few find assuring.

You may have heard Tokyo Electric has finally put out an estimate of 6-9 months. 3 months to bring down radiation levels around the plant significantly and 3-6 more months to have things "completely" controlled, if such a thing is truly possible at this point.

The biggest problem now is that the reactors must have cracks because they must continually pump water into them and pools of highly radioactive water have formed and are forming faster than they have the capacity to pump out into a safe place. They stopped a significant leak into the ocean, but now that means the pools will get higher faster and make it impossible for workers to go in and try to reestablish cooling systems. A real catch 22 - they must keep pumping water in the reactors to keep them cooling down, but the water they leak makes it impossible to get near enough to them to get the cooling systems online that would allow them to stop pumping massive amounts of water into them. They are sending in robots now, (everyone is wondering why Japan was so good at making robots for everything, but has had to rely on outside expertise for this) but as far as they have said at this point the robots can do little besides assess damage right next to and under the reactors and measure radiation levels.

Back to you Anderson.

Thanks for the update.
9 months... I guess I shouldn't be surprised...

Yes, Osama has passed, but here in Japan the excitement isn't over yet. Everyone was focusing on reactor 1, which they were having problems stabilizing. So just after a few days of good news about No. 1 (robots going in, workers going in, temps dropping), No. 3 has started to look scary again. Over the last 2.5 days or so, the temps have suddenly started going up again in no. 3 seemingly out of nowhere. They increased the amount of water being pumped in, but the temperature still continues to rise. The only thing they can think of is that water is leaking out from somewhere new before it even reaches the core. No. 3 is the only one that contains MOX fuel and therefore plutonium, which is among the scariest things that can come out of a reactor.

I noticed this steady rising myself because I read all the numbers put out by TEPCO daily, and it took about a day before the news started talking about it. I have yet to find a reference in English news about new No. 3 worries, but the number of such news bits in Japanese is increasing hourly.

This is just when we figured it was safe enough to stop having water delivered etc. (all steps above what the gov't recommends). Just made another water order in case things get worse (which of course of course they won't won't won't).

What's that about bin laden again? All that just can't keep my attention for long these days.

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Yes, OLB is taking up all the news time and space.
We are getting very, very little in the way of information from Japan.
Three small headlines on page 18:
Japan to halt three nuke reactors over quake concerns
Workers enter crippled Japan nuclear reactor
Dutch find radioactivity in container from Japan
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OBL
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OBL / OLB, I knew what ya meant. ( : It is funny, but Obama Biden, also looks a little too close to that name as well. Ah, the games the mind plays.

Yeah, still no English news on that after 8 hours sleep. When I do put in "reactor 3" and "Fukushima" in GoogleNews, all I get is your first news blurb up there about 3 reactors in other places being halted due to ongoing concerns. If I find anything I will post it.

Going off to see the sumo tournament opening ceremony today. It would be a nice distraction from things if sumo weren't currently mired in it's own scandalous fiascos...

As I said, I started scouring the net for news about reactor 3, because I am watching the numbers from the plant that TEPCO puts out everyday. At this point it is still largely off the radar even over here. I can't help but think this is largely because people over here are suffering from info and adrenaline fatigue, and that TEPCO and the gov't don't mind so much if people aren't worrying like they were. However, I don't think that makes this situation any less alarming. As a matter of face, that is the word that is starting to pop up in the articles I have found, "alarming". They continue to raise the amount of water flowing into the reactor, but the temp continues to go up unabated.