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The spent fuel rods that have been exposed to the air at reactor 4 at the Fukushima power plant have begun emitting "extremely high" levels of radiation according to US officials. This means that they have almost certainly gone critical.

A Tokyo Electric Power representative has said that "the possibility of recriticality is not zero" because of an unexpected fall in water levels in the pool storing the rods. Because the material is now apparently critical, it could explode. If so, this would be the third nuclear explosion on Japanese soil, after the US dropped bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945.
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Berkland is, to say the least, a controversial figure in geology. However, this is because he steps out of the standard theories and makes assertions based on his own theories, not because he’s an out and out crank. In this video, Neil Cavuto only mentions his hit on the ‘World Series’ earthquake of 1989, not his various misses. Still, he is worth listening to, if only as a reminder to everyone up and down the west coast to get their earthquake kits ready. What he doesn’t mention is that there have also been a couple of gamma ray bursts from deep space impacting the planet in the last few weeks, the last one yesterday.read more

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Germany has shut down seven of its nuclear reactors that are the same design as the Japanese reactors that have failed. It has ordered a safety review at all 17 reactors in the country. And last month congress voted to provide a $4 billion loan guarantee for two new nuclear reactors to be built and operated on the Gulf Coast of Texas by TEPCO, the Japanese company that built the reactors that have experienced meltdown.
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Are we in danger from radiation blowing our way from melted power plants in Japan? The reality is that the Japanese are the ones who have to worry. It turns out that even a major multiple meltdown in Japan is unlikely to have much of an effect here. Regarding iodine pills, they are only needed in the case of very significant doses of Iodine-131. In order to need them, you’d probably need to be downwind of a nuclear blast, and people over 40 shouldn’t take them at all, radiation exposure or not, because the chances of having an allergic reaction to the pills exceed the chances of getting cancer from radiation poisoning.
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