...the net economic impact will be a positive...

All the experts in the articles I've read say the situation is much closer in severity to Three Mile Island than to Chernobyl.

Here's the part I don't get. I thought nuke plants had a primary/secondary water cycle? Primary cycle in the containment vessel circulates water/steam. This goes thru a heat exchanger. Primary is cooled water and recirculated. The secondary then feeds the turbine.
Primary water is radioactive. Secondary is not.

If they are feeding in boron to lower fuel rod activity....this implies the primary side...and NOT a closed cycle. eep.

hopefully things fizzle

I was under the impression that it was very unlikely the containment structure would fail, even in the event of full melt down. I may have to eat my hat, though.

I have a hard time imagining a scenario where this will be "closer" to Chernobyl than TMI. Definitely bad, though!

At Chernobyl there was only one reactor that was breached. At Fukushima we have 6 to worry about (notice the spent fuel pools are an issue at all 6).

At Chernobyl a reactor *blew up*, apparently due to a nuclear explosion. Unless something unexpected happened recently, at Fukushima *no* reactors have sustained such an incident or such damage. The number of reactors affected by an incident in no way determines its seriousness and the radiation levels are totally different so far.

What's happening is obviously worse than TMI but Chernobyl is in a completely different league.

Please avoid lurid speculation. If you somehow have factual information about the risk of an explosion blowing away the containment or something, the post it. Otherwise it's irresponsible to spread baseless rumors with so many lives at stake.

There was a sudden power output surge, and when an emergency shutdown was attempted, a more extreme spike in power output occurred, which led to a reactor vessel rupture and a series of explosions. This event exposed the graphite moderator components of the reactor to air, causing them to ignite. The resulting fire sent a plume of radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and over an extensive geographical area

A nuclear explosion occurs as a result of the rapid release of energy from an intentionally high-speed nuclear reaction. The driving reaction may be nuclear fission, nuclear fusion or a multistage cascading combination of the two.

Atmospheric nuclear explosions are associated with mushroom clouds, although mushroom clouds can occur with large chemical explosions, and it is possible to have an air-burst nuclear explosion without these clouds. Nuclear explosions produce radiation and radioactive debris.

Google Translate's version:

Yamada Tetsurou WASHINGTON - U.S. civilian agencies, Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) on April 15, Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) established by the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES) 6 level presented the view that 7 or equivalent.

　The institute "can no longer be viewed as a level four," he said. "Near the level 6, level 7 may reach" are trying to. In the past, nuclear accident, Chernobyl level seven former Soviet Union's worst, from the Three Mile Island accident was the U.S. level 5.

Yahoo's Babel Fish:

The American civil organization, the scientific international security laboratory (ISIS) announced opinion that in level it is suitable 6 or 7 with the international atomic energy phenomenon appraisal scale (INES) where the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) decides on the 15th, concerning the accident of the Fukushima first nuclear plant. 　As for the same laboratory “it cannot already see as level 4,” that it points out. “To be close to level 6, perhaps, it reaches to level 7,” that it has done. In the past nuclear accident, the worst old Soviet in history & Chernobyl nuclear accident was level 7, as for American Three Mile Island nuclear accident level 5. (2011 March 16th 09:56 Yomiuri Shimbun Company)

Considering I already provided links to articles on The Oil Drum with plenty of documentation

Comparisons are being made with the accident at Chernobyl, but there are a number of very important differences, notably in terms of reactor design, and therefore accident implications. Nuclear safety in the former Soviet Union was once my research field (see Nuclear Safety and International Governance: Russia and Eastern Europe), and the specifics of the accident at Chernobyl could not be replicated in Japan. The risk in Japan is primarily meltdown, not a Chernobyl-style run-away nuclear reaction.

RBMK (Reaktor bolshoy moshchnosty kanalny [high-power channel reactor]), Chernobyl-type reactors have a very large positive void coefficient, meaning that reactivity increases as a positive feedback loop. The presence of steam from overheating increases reactivity, which increases steam production. The graphite moderator in an RBMK is flammable, and RBMKs also have no containment system. If two or three of the 1700 channels in an RBMK are breached, the steam pressure will lift the lid, introducing air, while shearing the remaining tubes. Essentially, the reactor will explode on a sharp spike of reactivity. The moderator will catch fire, and a nuclear volcano will be the result. At Chernobyl, some 50 million Curies of radiation was released over several days.

Like the Fukushima incident, Chernobyl began with a loss of power, undertaken in that case as a test of safety systems commissioned long after the reactor became operational (the Chernobyl reactor had been in a state of critical vulnerability to blackout for two years at the time of the accident.) It could have been worse, however. Attempts to extinguish the fire at Chernobyl 4 came very close to causing a loss of power to the other three reactors at the site, which could easily have sent four reactors into into a critical state rather than one.

Germany has shut down 7 plants. Strange... For how long?

Unit 1 to right, reactor building destroyed by hydrogen gas explosion on Saturday 12th March. Unit 3, second from left, destroyed by hydrogen gas explosion on Monday 14th March, venting steam? Unit 2, second from right, explosion causes radiation leak from containment system, venting steam? Unit 4 on left, building destroyed by fire on Tuesday and Wednesday, the likely result of spent fuel rods boiling dry in their cooling pond. Ironically, it is unit 4, shut down at time of incident, with large quantities of radioactive material outside of containment, that is a major cause for concern.

On Monday 14th, the reactor building of unit 3 exploded in similar manner to unit 1 but, at this point, there was still no significant radiation leakage, and the containment vessel seemed to be doing its job. It became evident that the Japanese engineers were loosing the battle to keep the reactor cores submerged in water and adequately cooled.

On Tuesday 15th March a third explosion in unit 2 resulted in serious radiation leak. This was a game changing event since contamination of the site by radioactive materials created a much more hazardous operational environment and many of the staff, who seemed to be fighting a losing battle in any case, were evacuated.

The reactor building of unit 4 caught fire on Tuesday. Successfully extinguished, the building caught fire again on Wednesday 16th March and fears grew that spent fuel rods lying in a cooling pond outside of containment had boiled dry exposing the reactor site to large quantities of radiation. The photograph up top shows unit 4 to the left and it is clearly badly damaged even though the reactor was non-operational at the time of the incident.

Unit 3 is also reported to have spent fuel outside of containment that is giving rise to concern.

If they had electricity on site, then they could pump water in.

They should have pretended like it was important and had generators staged outside the area to be flown in if necessary.

Bad place for a nuclear plant.