I'm still surprised Arnie has kept the storyline of the diesel generators failing as the main cause, because alot of evidence is pointing to compromised/inoperable safety systems due to inadequate reactor cooling water supply when the RCIC stopped working, the only way it would stop working would be if it had no water to pump.
Three Mile Island had significant % core melt within th first 4-8 hours of the accident. From some of the statements now coming out Fukushima's reactors were in full meltdown within 12-16 hours but my guess is probably sooner than that, while TEPCO told the world everything was under control. I remember early in the accident our military offered diesel generators to be flown in, TEPCO said don't bother, I'm sure their control room operators knew the truth about the loss of cooling water then right after the earthquake, nothing to do but sit back a watch when none of your safety system will work. Also from what gather the Japanese government had to force TEPCO to use seawater, and thank god they even did that!
Arnie Gunderson is finally beginning to think the Fuel has breached the bottom of the reactor vessel or vessels of units 1, 2 and 3 aside from the the fact the fuel pools can still ignite spewing nasty hot particel isotopes worldwide. THIS IS WORSE THAN CHERNYOBL. Had the fuel stayed somewhat contained in the reactor vessel maybe not. But this revelation is a game changer.
Alot of what I read about TEPCO they have no problem lying and covering things up and the Japanese government let them get away with it. I could see our NRC and our governement handling a major nuclear accident the same way though. I don't see any commenting from our NRC publically on their assessments because it would be an indictment of identical reactor designs running in this country of which they have granted license extensions to many 30-40 year old facilties within any requirements of validation of inspection or maintentance. Nor any warning about fallout coming from the accident, no whatsoever.
Being Japan is a small island, look at the contaminated exclusion zone of Chernyobl, Japan could be a sparsely populated island because of this.
From an NRC technical paper published by them, the % probability of significant if not total melt down of Lasalle Nuclear power station which is a Mark II GE BWR like Fukushima located in the heart of the midwest(NO TSUNAMI) is 80% if they lost all power for more than 4 hours, all safety procedure do not account for this possiblity, they must regain power within 4 hours of their battery backups if the diesel do not or cannot run with no off site power coming in. Actually the make a model of reactor is irrelevant to the analysis even a massive feedwater, reactor reciculation pipe could cause the above failures.