Yes - It CAN happen here....

The issue we have been asked about most often is - could this happen here? The answer is a most definite YES.

The main problem the Japanese are experiencing now has less to do with the actual reactors and much more to do with a problem very common to every nuclear plant in the United States. The problem is what to do with spent fuel (used up fuel rods).

When a civilian nuclear plant "refuels", the plant workers change around the configuration of the fuel rods in the reactor and replace the oldest rods with new fuel rods. The spent fuel rods are highly radioactive and extremely dangerous. In the U. S. we have never reached a consensus as to how to dispose of or store these rods so all U. S. plants have a spent fuel pool along with a spent fuel storage building (most) where the rods sit. These spent fuel rods require cooling water just like the reactor core except in many cases, the spent fuel is not stored in facilities anywhere near as robust as the actual core. In the BWR's in Japan (and several of which I am familiar in the U. S.) the spent fuel actually sits in a pool ABOVE the reactor.

Once the cooling flow is lost to the spent fuel pool and the fuel is uncovered, regardless of any other situations, the buildings become too dangerous to approach much less to work in. Exposure to spent fuel rods would cause very quick death. The protective suits you see workers wearing on the photos and videos coming out of Japan do not provide ANY protection from this type of radiation - only from contamination (see earlier post). There is NO suit or other magical device which can make it safe for humans to get near these reactors once the fuel is uncovered.

So what can they do now? I am not familiar with any remote systems which might be able to mitigate the damage by flooding the fuel and reactor but most of the actions you may have seen are what we would call "hail mary passes". If luck doesn't turn for the Japanese, a large swath of the country may be uninhabitable for many many years.