martha: why isn t it a dual system? i know absolutely nothing about how this operates but there s another way to raise the window in your car, right? yeah, probably if we build new reactors they there are dual systems, they will be much safer. this is evolveing technology, like cars and airplanes, you get better as you go along. most of the reactors are 30 years and they depend on the electric. martha: when you re in this zone, tsunamis have happened in japan and you have this thing on the water line, why wouldn t they have said at that point, gee, if something really rocks this reactor area, we may lose power here. well, to put it you couldn t retrofit an old reactor. you d have to build it from the ground up. it was too late, in your opinion. too late. martha: it sounds like we have systems to review here. even if they decided to do it would have taken a couple of years. it wouldn t have made a difference. martha: william trucker tucker, appreciate your
stuff. he served as governor for two terms, he s been traveling in ohio and new hampshire, obviously for good reason. it s coming up at 3:00. martha: getting the ball rolling. we ll see what happens. in the meantime, going back to japan, and this huge story, as john was as jon was talking about, smoke is billowing up from at least two, according to reports that we got from david piper earlier, of japan s nuclear reactors, once again, that forced responders away from the fukushima facility, it is coming, we believe, from this pool of spent fuel rods that sits around the main reactor area in the middle. if the water levels drop too low inside of reactor number three, a flood of radiation could be potentially released into the environment. radiation already being detected in several sources of food and water which was very frightening to hear over the course of this weekend and you heard that woman, sitting there with the umbrella, saying she was afraid the rain had radiation in it as w
trying everything they can possibly do, and it s appropriate. they need to try every possible measure. but the fact that the radiation levels are prohibitive for carrying out the measures is disturbing. i wonder how long it can be sustained. the u.s. government today gave a more dire technical assessment of what s going on in japan than we ve been hearing from the japanese government. the u.s. then changed advice to u.s. citizens,ç advising americans to evacuate further from the reactor area than japan had been advising. do you know why that shift happened? well, the nrc apparently published some calculations on its website that shows that there would still be significant doses 50 miles away from the site if all four reactors meltdown. this is really no surprise. anyone familiar with these types
irradiated environment. radiation levels are fluctuating wildly on site. the second danger is to the wider community living around the reactor area. here it s marginally better. right now the levels of radiation being released, though unacceptably high are unlikely to pose a risk to the health of the people outside the evacuation zone. go through what we heard about the various reactors. there s up to six of them. tell me which one worries you most. let s do triage. what worries you most? first i should point out there s deep uncertainty at the moment about all of this. for various reasons the plant operators even acknowledge they don t know what s going on. i think the top concern is the spent fuel pond in reactor number 4. it s lost the water and that means it s lost the ability to cool and protect. reactors 2 and 3, the cores in those two reactors are both in serious states. there s definitely been partial melting and there s significant trouble in trying to cool them. reactor 1