steam and cool it back into water. the way you do that is having a large body of water. here in the united states, we do that on big lakes. we do that on rivers. and we put in a cooling tower so we need less water. but we too have a lot of reactors that are on the ocean or on major bays. luckily, the east coast and the gulf coast are not subject to tsunami. the west coast may be. but those are designed for tsunami. at least they re designed for the biggest tsunami we think they d see. what happened in this case is this plant was hit by both an earthquake and then a tsunami bigger than what it was designed for. matthew wald, thank you very much. i m now going to go back to anderson cooper, who i think can now hear me. anders anderson, what is the latest? i heard your dramatic earlier report to me. but in terms of this latest explosion, the nuclear explosion, how worried are people where you are about the possible radiation fallout here?
areas, so that businesses can get some power and can actually start, you know, doing the business of the country and starting the relief efforts and the buildup, because you can t have an you want to minimize the economic crisis while you re dealing with the human crisis. so it s approaching 10:00 a.m. now, sunday morning in tokyo, where you are. very quickly, how concerned are people in tokyo about the potential for radiation fallout from those reactors? in situations like this one, it has to be very fatalistic. you realize, well, first you re 200 miles away. that s helpful. secondly, air, when it s released into the atmosphere, generally like areas like that, it will go out to sea to you feel it s not actually going to be a direct current right down to your home in tokyo. that said, it s never a relaxing thing. just as we re bracing ourselves for the potential difficulties that that means, we also feel tremors from time to time that remind us that mother nature is
these plants? i m not i don t think my intelligen intelligence i am privy to that kind of intelligence. however, i can tell you when we were leaving the evacuation center the officials were putting on these bright yellow hazmat type suits with face masks to i would assume to protect themselves against any sort of radiation fallout that would occur. how were you holding up? what s it like for you? it s fine. it s been a busy couple days but nothing like the harrowing experience these people up north are going through. i want you to hold on a moment. kenneth is joining us now, a correspondent for the economist magazine joining via skype from tokyo. how are you holding up, kenneth? well, i m holding up very well but of course what i m hearing on your broadcast is very alarming. i think that there s a few things that we can say with certainty and that is the needs of the japanese government. they must be transparent.
of what happened then, paying a price for that radiation fallout that occurred in chernobyl. matthew chance is in direct contact with officials at the international atomic energy agency in vienna. there are conflicting reports right now about whether one of japan s nuclear reactors is actually experiencing a meltdown right now. it is a very alarming situation, i must say. experts tell cnn a full-fledged meltdown allowing fuel rods to be exposed could result in temperatures rising to 5,000 degrees fahrenheit with radiation so intense, it would be impossible to deal with. our homeland security correspondent jeanne meserve is monitoring the breaking news for us. reporter: the japanese have been pouring seawater on to this reactor in an effort to keep it cool. in addition, they re pumping in boron in hopes of stopping the nuclear reaction and stemming the production of radioactive material. but the question has been, is
nuclear bombs would be enough to destroy all of the crops on earth. on earth. for ten years. because it creates a massive global temperature drop and as a result agriculture disappears, radiation fallout. that ten-year nuclear doesn t include the 20 million people that would die right away when the 100 nukes went in india, pakistan regional nuclear conflict. not so regional. think about this. each nuclear bomb would be enough to obliterate a major metropolitan area. one bomb new york city, one bomb d.c., one bomb paris, moscow, so we have 24,000 of those. 10% of those, a little more than 2,000, unaccounted for each one good enough to take out l.a.,