[John Rogers]

I am curious about how they are getting sea water in also? In the Navy's pressurized water systems when it came time to swing the blanks to allow sea water into the system, it meant that the primary system had failed structurally and that pressure was below fire main pressure. That also meant that the fuel had probably already started melting or had done that. They might have some emergency pumps for that as the last resort but no one is talking specifics and even through CNN had one of their plant's designers in an interview, I am guessing he was not allowed to talk about things in great detail.

As for radiation from a meltdown, during a refueling at one of the reactors in upstate NY in the early 70s, the risk analysis folks did lots of "what if" tests. The worst turned out to be when the reactor vessel top was being lowered into place that the large lifting hook snapped. They assumed the very large chunk of steel dropped 18 inches and the shock caused the fuel rods to jump to approximately 50% of their travel. Since there are no drive mechanisms attached they bounced and the result was the reactor going critical and then very rapidly accelerating in temp so fast that the meters could barely read it. By the time the operators saw the high temps the fuel had started to melt and even though the huge low pressure cooling pumps were started, the water being pumped in just bounced off the metal like a hot iron. The fuel then melted through the steel vessel bottom, through the concrete floor and approximately 300 feet into the ground where the earth stopped it. As for radiation, everyone in the ball died within 10 minutes, everyone on base died in about 2 hours and in the little town outside the base all died in a month. The QA folks checked the hook by x-ray right after that and it was okay!