appear to be borne out by photographs from the white house bathroom. tonight with the context, the international trade expert rebecca harding, and former adviser to president george w bush ron christie. hello, welcome to the programme. president biden is defying expectations, and earning a reputation as a president who gets things done. despite the toxic nature of washington politics or maybe because of it senate democrats have been working through the summer to bring about an impressive list of achievements and a lot of that has come with the support of republicans. first came the pandemic relief $1.9 trillion, otherswise known as the american rescue plan. then in november the infrastructure bill. injune the first bipartisan legislation in decades on gun safety. then came the chips act, to strengthen semiconductor manufacturing. then new health care benefits for millions of veterans exposed to toxic burn pits. a bipartian agreement on nato expansion admitting finland
the steam that would be released from a large break was supposed to be condensed and by the water in the suppression pool, in the large structure. and the concern was that if the structure failed as a result of these unconsidered loads, you would lose containment, which they may have continue at one of the fukushima plants now. and i would also lose the source of cooling water for the reactor core. so the the thing that was of potential trouble is you could have a core meltdown. an uncontrolled release of radioactive material. it sounds to me what you re describing is what s happening in terms of the loss of coolant and the overheating the result. am i being oversimplicity sonic is your fear what s been oversimplistic, or is your fear what s been happening?
reactors one, two, and three, what we re going for now is three mile island. that there s a partial meltdown, but that it s contained. and what we re looking at here with reactors reactor four, potentially, potentially five and six, is a situation which is closer to chernobyl. it s not an exact comparison because there were explosions at chernobyl that helped thrust that radioactive debris high into the atmosphere. there s no guarantee that that would happen in this case. again, if there s a fire, it s going to get distributed. the bottom line, yes, that s right. you re telling me our upside is three mile island. this is not good news. let s get back to the mechanics of what s going on here. what they re really trying to do and crazy as it sounds, water is the key ingredient here. they re trying to get enough water, not only to put thought fire but to keep these rods cool. and whether these 50 people can get enough water into these containment those pools with the spent rods and
straight up arguably into the atmosphere. there s no containment vessel around the spent fuel pools. is that correct? that is 100% absolutely correct. i mean, the sort of thing we re hanging our hat on reactors one, two, and three is, yes, there s a partial meltdown, yes, there are problems. but thank god at least there s a containment vessel. you know, three feet of concrete and steel that might contain radiation in case the worst thing happens. well, that does not exist for the spent fuel rods. correct me if i m wrong, the thing that made chernobyl the disaster of all disasters was there was not any containment vessel around the reactor there, remarkable as that was. and so when that thing blew up, the stuff, the radiation went straight into the atmosphere. if we get that sort of fire and c catacl ysm, that could happen, that s the great fear everybody s got now. in principle that s exactly right. i mean, what we would hope for, what we were hoping for for
course of two hours you got the 50% meltdown. here if we go much longer what is the worst case scenario for us here? well, we hope we don t get there, but if they lose cooling in those reactors, then all of the fuel could melt, and it would then it could then go through the bottom of the pressure vessel. it would then fall down into the containment, the concrete containment, but none of these structures are designed to cope with this kind of event. and so it s unclear what happens. you know, victor in any case, it would be it would be an easier path from the waste which is in this molten fuel to the outside, and that s really the most worrisome thing. but you talk about the path to the outside. we ve been discussing these spent fuel chambers or pools, and why was this reactor designed without creating more protection between the spent fuel pools and the outside