program in there working frantically to control the reactor are now being evacuated due to radiation. what can you deduct from all of that? well, for some of these reactors, they are talking about using fire hoses to spray water into the spent fuel pools. they have to operate these pumps. some of these things might operate for a little bit of time on their own. but with four reactors down and the need to pump cooling water, even the things that seem to be sort of under control, like the reactor vessel in number one, risk getting out of control. as i was explaining, these are pressure cookers and if you don t vent the steam, periodically, then the pressure cookers will explode. buildings external buildings reactor buildings are already gone, so it s a pretty grave situation. i don t i m not aware of how whether they can operate
but remember the initial levels are very low. they are set very low. so when they raise them they are not raising them to extraordinary levels. the numbers i have seen coming out of japan in the sense of radiation numbers are not really levels that would do you harm unless you were in there for some period of time. and they drop right back off. when they release the pressure notice reactor vessel. they release some of the radiation that comes from the fuel damage. i don t prefer meltdown. i prefer some of the fuel is melting. there is no doubt. that s how you get releases. but a lot of them are nitrogen. they come out and spike the radiation man towards. but they are not really a threat. megyn: when you watch this and heart data as an expert, you don t sound that concerned. and is that a fair assessment?
do you have a sense based on what our officials are saying and the reports coming in how close we are to a worse case scenario. with regard to the spent fuel pool it s already there. if you have combustion occurring in a dry spent fuel pool that story would be your stop story regardless of anything else. if it weren t for the other three reactors. it s already very bad. with regard to the three รง reactors, the worse case is that the reactor vessel would melt through and the core material would come out. that s even worse than the fuel fire. if that happens and we hope, of course, that it doesn t happen. we hope they fix the power line, et cetera, et cetera. if it does happen, then what s the situation? could that spread all the way to tokyo? are people right to be concerned that some are leaving tokyo now or would it not get that far? it fends depends on the
work. this is a major turning point. what does this mean? the people that we were talking about just moments ago on this program in there working frantically to control the reactor are now being evacuated due to radiation. what can you deduct from all of that? well, for some of these reactors, they are talking about using fire hoses to spray water into the spent fuel pools. they have to operate these pumps. some of these things might operate for a little bit of time on their own. but with four reactors down and the need to pump cooling water, even the things that seem to be sort of under control, like the reactor vessel in number one, risk getting out of control. as i was explaining, these are pressure cookers and if you don t vent the steam, periodically, then the pressure
they re taking what i would consider to be desperate measures to get control. and one of those measures would be having to drop water into the pool using helicopters. so you do describe that as desperate measures. absolutely. then you have, sir, reactor number 2. we ve highlighted this because this is also the other huge concern because there are reports that the containment vessel within that surrounds the reactor is damaged. what are you hearing, and how bad, if that containment dome goes? well, there are two barriers that are designed to prevent the escape of the radioactivity in the core. there s the primary reactor vessel, which is a large steel container, that is the piece of equipment that s of grave concern right now.