True...it's just that Chernobyl currently stands as the extreme end of what a catastrophic nuclear plant failure looks like, so it serves as the comparison, barring anything more appropriate.

Plutonium is exactly why this could be worse, which is what these nuclear engineers and experts have been saying...even though everyone has been trying to play it down. Never mind that there are 4 dangerous reactors vs 1 at Chernobyl.

I was truly impressed by the Russian physicist who spoke in the CSpan video. I think he is someone who knows what he's talking about, even though he isn't saying what people would prefer to hear.

[link to www.rferl.org]

Japanese Plant's Plutonium Containment Vessel May Have Ruptured

March 25, 2011

The operator of Japan's stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant has admitted there may be damage to the protective containment vessel around the most dangerous fuel rods in the complex -- the plutonium fuel rods in reactor No. 3.

The admission comes after Japan's government announced that workers who suffered burns while trying to cool the crippled No. 3 reactor were exposed to radiation levels 10,000 times higher than expected...

..."Currently, there is a high possibility that the third reactor's fuel rods are damaged and that is where we think [the radioactive water] came from," he said.