terrible fear relating factor. but i believe that it s not likely that they re going to see health hazard creating levels of radioactivity, not with what we know right now. let me see if i understand completely what you ve described as going on. when the earthquake happened, the nuclear reactor shut down, and the nuclear rods dropped into a core and fission stopped. heat continued to be radiated inside the containment area is, that right? yes. that s a good description. the problem is that electricity is running the coolant system and reducing that heat inside the containment area. am i correct? that s correct. there s a lot of heat in there. you can t shut this down heatwise very quickly. they did prevent a meltdown by dropping the rods down into the reactor. that s what went wrong at chernobyl, the rods didn t go in. now that there s heat, we ve heard terms like the pressure is soaring. is this why we begin to see this radiated steam let out of the