Aye, TMI (info, not 3Mi-Island) of generic kind
-- way too little from which one can deduce useful things.
Understandably, the sorts of details we'd like some accurate info about just won't happen until in retrospect;
neither time nor patience to bring in a sci-literate 'scribe + camera' to get the words out. Bring your own floodlights and lunch?
Among the minefield of unknowns: whether the tsunami immersion so screwed up pumps, temp/px monitoring sensors, hyd. actuators and controllers
-- that even were a US flattop to bring in a self-contained AC power unit via a huge Huey:
Would much of the stuff and its controlling electronics still function?
But how such things as, say the Px-relief valves in the torus? can be operated at all without AC power from Somewhere?
-- I don't grok (either.)
As to intermixed Boron and elephant feet blobs, it seems a mares nest of not-calculable cross-sections;
if cooling of the blob-surfaces could.. be accomplished, then further neutron absorption could come from concentrated borate slurries, one supposes.
No need to ponder moderators and spacings, I'd think: what you want is lots of the best n-absorbing substance available. By express Lear Jet.
But this is rapidly ceasing to be an enviro where a robot could eat the Rads, even to haul a fire-hose end up to a steaming pool, given a debris-covered floor
(We don't even know if any? many? of these pools' 'containment integrity' has been compromised)
And it seems that TEPCO's workers/mgment have also PO'd the government minions, having failed to inform of the 6am-ish most recent fire, for some hours.
Who's not leveling with whom?
Apparently it was machine lube oil which was burning at #6 following the (alleged) release of nascent-H via water + overheated Zircalloy spent-rod cladding, that which caused that explosion.
Watch and wait..
PS:
NYT is collecting (intelligent) questions today, to be 'answered' tomorrow by whatever selection of boffins they have managed to corral:
http://green.blogs.n...n-japan/?ref=asia
Some noticed, appear to be al punte ... re several of those puntes.
