you can explain it. the backup cooling system failed. what they re going to try, they say, is to bring sea water in to try to bring down the temperature of the reactor back to safe levels. have you heard of that strategy? well, i m hearing it now, that s kind of in my mind, what they were probably doing is pulling water from what s called the compression pool, but what s the diesel generators they have no way to cool down the water in that suppression pool, so as they run it through the core, it s heating up and then putting hot water back into the core. so the fact that they re looking at sea water in tells me they can t get those generators started and that s not a good thing. clayton: all right, jeffrey bonner, a nuclear earning near, thank you for your expertise this morning, thank you for joining us. happy to help. alisyn: we re getting news into the news, three japanese
all of the plants shutdown, and 111 of the pla the pla 1 all of the plants shutdown, and 111 of the pla 111 of the pla 11 of the plants shutdown. it is like putting a pan in the oven. you can turn the oven off, but if you go in to reach for the pan, it is still going to be hot. and the reactor core is still hot even though the plant is shutdown. so you have to cool it down so that the fuel inside of that plant doesn t melt. the problem is that theel cooing system, the initial cooling system broke down, and then the backup cooling system which was running on diesel fuel was flooded, and so it is not whether they have coolant or not, but electricity to pump the water into the plant to keep the plant at a regulated level. so was this with the way that the plant was designed or something that could not be controlled? well, all of the nuclear power plants have several layers of defense, and lots of backup systems, but this is a case in which the backup system has failed. now, we are not