The earthquake and tsunami that recently hit Japan knocked out the back-up power that runs the cooling system on several of Japan’s nuclear reactors, exposing fuel rods, and damaged components to several of the reactors. The Japanese have worked tediously to avoid a full meltdown by cooling the control rods with seawater from the Pacific Ocean and deploying helicopters and fire trucks to more effectively disperse water on the units. Japan’s reactors were tested to withstand an earthquake of a 7.9 magnitude. Unfortunately, the earthquake that struck last Friday was of a 9.0 magnitude.
