they have an end in sight? we don t know what they re thinking. i assume you have to tell yourself a story that there s an end here. end here otherwise it s hard to keep going. they can plausibly tell themselves a story that as reactors one, two and three begin to cool, that maybe they can get that under control. the story for reactors three and four in that nuclear waste and those spent fuel ponds, that s a harder challenge and one can see that going on and on and on. as long as they dump water in it, that buys them time. but sanjay, tomorrow, and god knows i hope this isn t the case, but you could be working your heart out, you re under all this stress, think you re making some progress. and if tomorrow there s a hydrogen explosion or spike in radiation or a friend of yours dies, i assume that can you re back right where you started. so i think every day is going to
tepco has come out and said that the amount of radiation released has peaked friday, today. what was the measurement? 20 millisieverts per hour. today, we have seen the greatest amount of radiation being released. jim, what do you make of that? that s not the direction you want it to go in. you want it to be declining rather than increasing. if it was a rapid spike, you might say well, maybe there was a problem in one of the with the containment vessels. maybe there had been a rupture or leakage. but that doesn t seem to be the way things have played out in the last several days. but if there s a slow rise, that would point to the nuclear waste in the spent fuel ponds and that there s insufficient water there and they may be correcting to an increase in the radiation in the immediate area. that s just a guess.
filling the spent fuel ponds. david, so a power can be restored to these water pumps, ifby look at this optimistically and if pumps aren t damaged could we see a relatively quick resolution to all of this? it is very important to get the electricity. that s a real plus. and we should be hopeful. as you point out, you get the electricity, you got to hope the pumps work. they may not because of earthquake damage or damage from explosions. so but we won t know until it is hooked up. but these workers have to try to hook this up in an environment of pretty significant radiation so it takes extra time and it s already been delayed. but it is part of what s necessary to get this crisis under control. david, thanks for coming on. we appreciate your insight all week long here on the daily rundown. experts have predicted very low levels of radiation could be detected along the west coast as early as today, but president obama insists there s no reason to be concerned. we do not ex
it s held to something like 1 1/2 so these are very, very high rates. they re nothing like what you re talking about. so, victor, just to follow up, if that is the measured level of radiation right now, is it fair to presume that probably that is coming from these spent fuel ponds that don t have water in them? well, yes, apparently at least in unit 4, the they dried it out or nearly dried it out, the fuel what happens at first is the cladding or the tubing which the fuel pellets are put for in fuels like 14 feet long, that reacts with hot steam to form hydrogen. you had a hydrogen burn, fast burn or explosion as it s sometimes called really an explosion is something different, but it has the same effect and i m sorry. go ahead. well, it blew out part of the
helicopters and water cannons to try to cool down a damaged nuclear reactor. it s a desperate attempt to prevent a meltdown. helicopters are trying to drop sea water on the overheated fuel pool at the reactor. choppers jumped 7 dumped 7 1/2 tons of sea water with each of the four passes. radiation levels remain high after the initial attempts, but the plant owner says the effort will continue. we want to bring back cnn contributor jim walsh. he s an international security analyst at mit. all right, so a lot of things have been attempted now. you ve got the water, then the attempt to get the generators going. what next? well, i think the main thing is to focus on keeping water in the reactor and water at the spent fuel ponds where the nuclear waste is stored. you know, the hopeful thing here is the best outcome is if they can stabilize the situation. over the next several days, those the active reactors, units one, two, and three, will begin to cool down. one hopes.