As experts in Japan race to stave off an accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, the U.S. nuclear industry says the same emergency is unlikely to happen in this country. Even though 23 of the 104 nuclear reactors are of the same General Electric design as the Fukushima reactors causing the crisis in Japan, a nuclear industry spokesman said there are guidelines in the United States that would decrease the likelihood of such a disaster here. The 23 General Electric-designed reactors are more than 40 years old and are spread throughout the United States in cities such as Toms River, N.J., Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Vernon, Vt. To generate electrical power, these nuclear reactors use a boiling water system, known as a boiling water reactor. These reactors continue to produce heat even after fission reactions have stopped. Normally, water pumps are used to cool them down, but the pumps are powered by electricity.
After the tsunami caused by the 8.9 magnitude earthquake that struck Japan on Friday, the wide loss of electricity meant emergency crews had to truck in sea water to cool the reactors. At the Fukushima plants, 175 miles north of Tokyo, experts told ABC News that it appears evident that there has already been some damage at the core of one or more of the reactors. If those reactors don't cool down soon, the world could experience another disaster on the scale of the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986. That is a no no. We cannot let that happen.
A hydrogen explosion reportedly ripped through another reactor at the Japanese nuclear plant. The same place where, recently, a reactor exploded Saturday, deepening a crisis government officials are calling the worst the nation has faced since World War II. Officials from Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said the reactor's containment was not damaged and although radiation was leaked, levels were low.
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