[ALERT] Core meltdown at Fukushima Dai'ichi highly likely

There is some good reporting on the state of the containment efforts at the out-of-control nuclear fission reaction housed in the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant. The New York Times has a lengthy article. There is an excellent description, of a moderately technical nature, on the Beyond Nuclear website. And a lot more that you can find among the noise.

There is a little gold-mine of an interview of a nuclear engineer (done by his daughter). [Video/audio/transcript available.]

The short version is this: a skeleton staff of personnel of about 60 people at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant stands a very low probability of averting a meltdown. From the Times article:

“We are on the brink,” said Hiroaki Koide, a senior reactor engineering specialist at the Research Reactor Institute of Kyoto University. “We are now facing the worst-case scenario. We can assume that the containment vessel at Reactor No. 2 is already breached. If there is heavy melting inside the reactor, large amounts of radiation will most definitely be released.”