Power Restored at Fukushima-Daiichi

==> Provided the control panels, motors and pumps are still in good shape. Let's hope Murphy has been chained to a lamp post in Nagasaki.

On March 19 when the graphite control rods began to burn, all satellite pictures of F-D-I became classified and no more have been released. The status at this moment is as follows: Reactors 1,2, and 3 are in partial meltdown and the control rods in reactor 3 are probably on fire. At least one of the main containments is breached. Partial power has been restored to all of the reactors but the only things in operation are some of the lights in 2 and 3. No one is trying to get any of the original cooling equipment back on line. The explosions wrecked that. What they are trying to do is keep the cores from a criticality excursion. They can keep trying to do that until one of the cores reaches the water table. Some of the spent fuel rods were stored in pools near the tops of the reactors and came crashing down on the machinery external to the main containments during the hydrogen explosions. It is somewhat unlikely that they did no damage. The ones that didn't fall are sitting in cracked pools overheating - there is not enough fresh water in the area anymore to cool the reactors, even if the pumps worked - and pumping seawater merely deposits salts as it evaporates or flashes into steam. That is not a viable long-term solution either. I (personally) assess the incident as a level 7. At this point what is happening is just the opposite of what happened at Chernobyl - when THAT reactor exploded, it stopped the reaction. At F-D-I the reaction is still in progress and the situation seems to be deteriorating.