Batchelor on the latest in Japan's nuclear reactor crisis

The John Batchelor Show has been closely following the situation. Below is John's most recent post at his website on the still-unfolding crisis. See the website for links and photos included in the post.

10 Million Times
by John Batchelor on March 27, 2011 12:46 AM ET

Sudden darkening news from Fukushima includes a Reuters flash, now backed by a BBC report, that the water at Unit #2 is up to 10 million times normal, and that the workers must be evacuated. This is not a positive development after anecdote for the last days of workers damaged by radiation from working in water.

The Japanese government has aleady estimated the quake and tsunami and reactor disaster to cost over $300 Billion. The puzzle remains if it can be contained. The reports for several days have pointed to Unit #3 as the problem. Unit #2 (below, #2 control room as they restored lights) was not featured for several days and was presumed solved.

The evacuation zone outside of Fukushima continues to grow, with a quarter of a million already evacuated and the red line spreading into Fukushima Prefecture.

The challenge is how to measure the TEPCO failure at Fukushima. The reminder is that this is said to be a 60% man-made crisis caused by TEPCO's denial, arrogance, delay and deception in the first critical hours.

A strange victim, of many more to come, is Angela Merkel, who is now slated to lose a bi-election in Baden-Wurtemberg because she reversed course on nukes in Germany. The Germans have only 17 reactors, and they have closed the 7 most like Fukushima for the short-term. The Greens are rallying voters to the no-nuke cause.

It is coming the US way, and we have 104 reactors, with four on fault zones and more than twenty like the light-water reactors at Fukushima.

The ongoing crisis at Fukushima will weaken the nuke forces in all hemispheres. Worse, TEPCO is now baldly revealed as untrustworthy, and this case will spoil all trust of nuke operators.