The Greatest Threat Now Facing Humanity

Confidence Slips Away as Japan Battles Nuclear Peril

Ken Belson and Hiroko Tabuchi, The New York Times

Ken Belson and Hiroko Tabuchi report: "Compounding the matter, the government said Tuesday that the recent discovery of plutonium in the soil at the plant provided new evidence that at least one reactor was experiencing melting of its nuclear fuel, as happened in the early days."

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[I don't think we have begun to assimilate the greatest threat now facing us -- not a Libya or other lesser wars or 'revolutions'. Rather it is the prospect of a massive eruption induced by the nuclear materials now dripping on the concrete bases of the Japanese reactors which can produce a huge nuclear explosion. Unhappily no one seems to know from where these wastes are leaking, so they cannot be blocked.
Already we are now discovering small amounts of radiation still safe so far from Japan. But the major eruption merely mentioned in an interview with two experts on such things, but not reported elsewhere to my knowledge, would spread deadly radiation across our northern hemisphere. Google covers only lesser explosions of the reactors, not the equivalent of an unimaginably massive 'nuclear bomb'.

Needless to say we should be focusing all of our attention, expertise, and monies on averting this catastrophe! The Japanese experts look to be lost with this unimagined Armageddon! Ed Kent]
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"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
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Ed Kent [blind copies]