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[stocks]

Japan Nuclear Fallout: How Bad Could It Get?

It might be a financial disaster, but no member of the public has been hurt, and I doubt anybody will be.

What happens if all the water boils off?

Hypothetically, if the water all boils and evaporates, then the fuel will stay molten and eventually melt through the steel vessel. But that's already beyond a hypothetical worst-case scenario for me. The steel vessel is four inches thick, and they could always put seawater around the vessel, and that would keep it cool, so it can't melt. If you put a frying pan in water, you could put a blowtorch on the other side and it won't make any difference. Then you have the other containment vessel, with a concrete faceplate underneath that's between four and 10 feet thick. But melting through that is hypothetical beyond normal reasoning.

Radiation spiked at 1,015 microsievert per hour before the explosion. Is that dangerous?

No, that's about 100 milirem. It's high, but you get about 35 milirems on a trans-Atlantic flight. And if you live in Denver, you get about 50 milirems per year.

Nuke