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
exactly lace been going on there? what is the problem? well, the japanese have multiple redundant systems in their nuclear power plants. they have learned from other people s mistakes, like a chernobyl, for instance, an 11 reactors went down originally, and automatically went down the minute they got some vibrations in the ground. one of them had some problems in dissipating the heat. these reactors are hard to shut down. once they get going forward to dissipate the heat, they have to evaporate water or steam. in one of them, a backup system did apparently not work, and they had to route it a different way. as a result, they evacuated several thousand people from around that reactor which is a very unusual move for the japanese to make. yeah. this is the first time the japanese government has ever declared a nuclear emergency, i understand. the way it was described to me is that if you have your oven and you have a pan inside the oven, if you turn the oven off after it s been on fo
and in this particular case there might be a problem with the backup system. appreciate that. giving us very good insight into what has been happening, and the concern is radioactivity may get out. those ten kilometers or six miles away have been told to stay indoors. and that s the further priority number one is the prime minister is about to get in a helicopter as the sun is about to rise to go to that plant and assess that beyond other assessments. coming up next though, we continue getting amazing video from you, our i-reporters and also our i-reporters in japan. the scenes, they are devastating. we are also seeing the moment during the quake and during the tsunami. stay right here. breaking news on cnn. boy, i m glad we got aflac huh. aflac! oh, i ve just got major medical. major medical. .but it helps pay the doctors.
plant. japan relies 80% . 30%. 80% imported and 30% nuclear. a power plant where we re told that the japanese government no radiation release but that there is a pressure build and asked for coolant. that s basically water. can you understand from what they have said publicly what is going on there? so imagine obama s job today as if all of this wasn t enough. you have a major natural disaster in japan that could turn into a technological disaster if they don t get control of this overheating nuclear reactor on the coast of japan. hit by the quake. it s about 200 mirls north of tokyo. and the problem is that the power went out. the power that drives the pumps that puts the water in to the reactor to cool it, it went out. the backup system went out and the backup systems failed. so now what you have is water turning into steam. it s not turned off but the rods
are angry at journalists for showing pictures of what s going on and we re trying our damndest to get this out but we have no internet connection, no cell phones, no sms. i ve been trying to reach my wife. the biggest challenge, in addition, of course, to the violence that the police are subjecting us to. how are you getting a signal up? can i ask you that or can t you say? i d rather not say because it s best that we keep that sort of our thing ourselves. we have a backup system but it s also under stress because many other journalists are using the same system. let me ask you this question. the egyptian government and military seems to be showing some restraint over the past