It's not unusual for TEPCO they are a scandalous company, I worked over in that country some years ago when they basically poisoned the people of a community not to far from where I was working.

The incompetence and scandals aren't unique to TEPCO, a lot of other companies are cutting costs and safety. Thousands of people at Tokaimura in Ibaraki were forced indoors and in 97 the had some other bad incidents. The JCO plant at Tokai also has a bad record causes bad accidents has little regulation and never gets slapped authorities. Shika hatsudensho also had a number of accidents but the company was good at covering it up. A lot of Japanese were forced into hospital after a self-sustaining fission chain reaction.

Thankfully nothing has gone 'Chernobyl' yet, it would be especially bad in the Tokyo region. With a metropolitan population of over 30 million people you'd be talking about a large number of deaths plus because Japan is a big player in production cars, electronic products et cetera there is a chance of a wider economic impact on the world economy.

The BBC love homeopathy, being the chattering class luvvies that they are. They are loving this almost as much as launch window is.

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2 good 2 need 4 engines

I think we have this homeopathy wrong. If we go by the tenets of homeopathy, then Sea of Japan is now the cure for all radiation induced diseases. It is a Sea of Life. Peopel will make pilgrimages to the Holy Waters. In fact, we could say it was the hand of God, who tipped over those canisters to create his Waters of Creation.

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2 good 2 need 4 engines

Maybe now it is, but it wasn't when I wrote the OP. It was exactly as I quoted.
Well; I see my opinions will just create debate, so I'll let you be befuddled.
This is not a black and white, wrong or right issue. It is an issue of protrayal, interpretation and emotion. The headline indicated a major problem, which it was not. It's my opinion and induced an image to me.
I am discussing the headline. What others did, or what CNN did at other times or how they did it in the story are not what I'm saying. Yes; I use many sources just because of this type of situation.

Please; I had a beef, I got it out, it's only my opinion. It's not worth debating. You had some good points, but we will never be able to convince each other.

There are others here posting good information about the spill, and generally what goes on at a plant. How about we focus on that.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

The tipped canisters are a separate incident from the water leak, and as far as I have read there was no radioactive material from the canisters that escaped from containment. Tepco has a PDF file on their website with a complete list of everything they know so far. Unfortunately, they disabled copy-paste from the PDF so I can't translate it without retyping it all--in Japanese. Anyone here read Japanese and want to translate?

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Do try not to take me too seriously.

Let's see...
Title is ...
Niigataken over center field open sea jishinhassei by means of kashiwazaki kariwa nuclear power station of omona plant situation

top left is:
plant information (jishinhassei afterwards before plant halt)

top right is:
* storage ghostly dead leaf today blank natural defences wo enforcement
* radioactive material load kakawa bend over event : area fill

Well, that didn't make much sense. Obviously I'm not translating this. I just figured out how to unlock the PDF for copy/paste.

First line is:
. second-hand fuel pool of change base by means of untenjou limit of deviation and return. 7 moon 16 day at notice corner (I'd say that's suppose to be 7 month 16 day, or 7/16.)

Edit: Wrong blasted button.

Well, for what I've translated so far, it's a long grocery list of what they're inspecting and working on and it'll put you to sleep. Weld inspection status, electrical conduit inspection, an "Ocean fart discharge", etc. Looks very similar to ye ole outage status report.

Exactly, yet that list is the source of the "Quake causes 50 problems at nuclear plant" headline that was going around yesterday. All of the problems are minor and pretty much what the designers intended after a large earthquake, yet the headline writer is clearly just looking for a big scary number. It wouldn't be so bad if the article itself at least gave the details necessary to put the "50 problems" in perspective, but there is not really any more information in them than the headline.

BTW, how do you unlock the PDF? Also, what translator are you using? Google's was doing a little better than that for me.

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Do try not to take me too seriously.

That's pretty funny. I can guess most of it, though. the "over center field open sea" is just the name of the earthquake in Japanese. "Jishin hassei" means "earthquake event". And "omona" means "serious".

So I think it means "Serious situation at Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear power plant station due to occurrence of earthquake off coast of Niigata Prefecture."

Note: I didn't look at the PDF. I'm just guess translating.

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As above, so below

And by the way, people here are taking it pretty seriously, which I think is why the media has highlighted that part of the story. Earthquakes are not really big stories unless something like this happens. And a lot of people, as mentioned by Launch window, are suspicious of the electric companies, and people always wonder, "is it really safe to have nuclear power plants in a country that is so earthquake prone?"

So I guess the media can be faulted for being sensationalistic about it. But in a sense it's responding to what people want from the media, I think.

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As above, so below

I searched for online translators, partway through I noticed that it was associated with an anime fan site, go figure. Didn't think of using Google to translate it.

I also searched for "unlock pdf" and came across a site that does it for you.

How would you express a Hirhoshima - Nagasaki echo without dropping a fat boy, with a sense for symbolism?

powerful typhoon, strong earthquake, nuclear leak

I expected this echo as mentioned on the timeline weeks ago....again

They were talking about this reactor on NPR this morning because they have apparently discovered a new leak at the plant. They were interviewing Adrian Heymer, senior director at the Nuclear Energy Institute. (you can listen to the interview here). The interviewer (Linda Wertheimer) was trying to make the accident sound severe, like they do, by saying the plant suffered significant damage because it was built on top of a fault line, but I liked Heymers response.
This forced Wertheimer to make comments about leaving nuclear waste lying around instead.

All in all, I like NPR because they at least get on the phone with people that know what they're talking about instead of inventing "facts" and sensationalising endlessly.

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I was just sitting here contemplating the immortal words of Socrates who said, "I drank what?"

"Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot." --Carl Sagan "Pale Blue Dot"

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov