Breaking news from CNN.com:


Workers at Japan's damaged nuclear power plant have suspended operations and evacuated, chief Cabinet secretary says.

Yikes.  My hair is almost standing on end reading that.  

This means that FOUR reactors are going to melt down, meaning that the fuel will probably burn into the ground creating plumes of radioactive dust.  The reactors are not like Chernobyl, there is more protection, more containment, even after they're deserted.  But there are four of them, and they're closer to a major city, so...

I used to be into Japanese cinema, has anyone seen Akira Kurosawa's Dreams?  There are two episodes about a post-nuclear Japanese wasteland, that will probably come true.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/auteurs_production/stills/2183/original.jpg?1289432111

[11:30 p.m. ET Tuesday, 12:30 p.m. Wednesday in Tokyo] A white cloud of smoke or steam rising above Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant may have been caused by a breach in the containment vessel in reactor No. 3, government officials said.

"There's a probability the vapor is coming out of a broken part of containment vessel. This is a possibility," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said Wednesday.

A spokesman for Japan's nuclear safety agency later told reporters that analysts were still trying to determine the cause of fluctuating radiation levels at the plant, but that radiation levels may have increased "because the containment vessel in reactor No. 3 has been damaged."

[11:01 p.m. ET Tuesday, 12:47 p.m. Wednesday in Tokyo] The reported radiation readings near the front gate of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi plant are fluctuating by the hour, but currently do not pose any health hazard, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said Wednesday. The reading spiked once Tuesday night, he said.

Meanwhile, The Japan Times reports that radiation reached around 20 times normal levels in the capital Tuesday morning, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government said, while offering the assurance this reading posed no immediate risk to human health and that the public should remain calm.

"I received a report this morning that there was an important change of data," Gov. Shintaro Ishihara said at a news conference. "I heard that it will not immediately cause health problems."

[10:47 p.m. ET Tuesday, 11:47 a.m. Wednesday in Tokyo] Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said Wednesday workers at Japan's damaged Fukushima Daiichi plant have suspended their operations and been evacuated.

[9:20 p.m. ET Tuesday, 10:20 a.m. Wednesday in Tokyo] The death toll in Japan has risen to 3,676, authorities said. he number of dead is expected to go up as rescuers reach more hard-hit areas

At least 7,558 people are missing and 1,990 are injured, according to the National Police Agency Emergency Disaster Headquarters.

[8:26 p.m. ET Tuesday, 9:26 a.m. Wednesday in Tokyo] Stocks in Japan opened higher Wednesday morning, one day after the island nation's main market index suffered one of its biggest drops on record, CNNMoney's Ben Rooney reports.

The Nikkei 225 index, the most prominent measure of Tokyo market stocks, rose 520 points, or 6%, shortly after the market opened. The rebound comes after intense selling in the previous two sessions. On Tuesday, the index plunged 10.6%, marking the third worst one-day plunge in the Nikkei's history.

[6:42 p.m. ET Tuesday, 5:42 a.m. Wednesday in Tokyo] U.S. government experts trying to construct a model of radiation plumes emanating from Japan's Fukushima Daiichi power plant are being hampered by a "paucity of good data," a senior administration official said.

[6:24 p.m. ET Tuesday, 5:24 a.m. Wednesday in Tokyo] Some context for the new fire in the Fukushima Diiachi nuclear power plant's Reactor 4 building: This is that building's second fire in two days.

The first fire, discovered Tuesday in a cooling pond used for nuclear fuel, coupled with Tuesday's explosion at the plant's No. 2 reactor, briefly pushed radiation levels at the plant to about 167 times the average annual dose of radiation, according to details released by the International Atomic Energy Agency. This chased all but a handful of workers from the site and raised fears of a far more dangerous radiation threat.

Tuesday's dose would quickly dissipate with distance from the plant, and radiation quickly fell back to levels where it posed no immediate public health threat, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said.

The effect that Wednesday's fire was having on radiation levels and information about the fire's cause weren't immediately available. About 200,000 people living within a 12.4-mile radius of the plant have long been evacuated.

Three explosions and two fires have now been reported in various reactor buildings in the past five days.

[6 p.m. ET Tuesday, 5 a.m. Wednesday in Tokyo] A new fire was discovered Wednesday morning in the northeastern corner of Reactor 4 building at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant, an official with Tokyo Electric and Power told reporters.

[4:48 p.m. ET Tuesday, 5:48 a.m. Wednesday in Tokyo] The U.S. military has blocked its own access to a range of websites to free up bandwidth for use in Japan recovery efforts, according to a spokesman for U.S. Strategic Command.

The sites - including YouTube, ESPN, Amazon, eBay and MTV - were chosen not because of their content but because of their popularity among users of military computers, spokesman Rodney Ellison said.

U.S. Pacific Command made the request to free up the bandwidth. The sites, 13 in all, are blocked across the Department of Defense's .mil computer system.

Workers are back in the plant, radiation levels have fallen.  

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/16/us-japan-quake-smoke-idUSTRE72F0AW20110316

It doesn't really matter, all the back-and-forth, the ups and downs.  The bottom line is that people should get out of Tokyo.  I had a kind of premonition last night that Tokyo was doomed and I warned someone to tell a friend they have there.  

I have an extremely, extremely accurate sense about things like this, about how bad each incident is.  This isn't as bad as Chernobyl in terms of radiation that will be released, or maybe it's equally as bad or slightly worse... Anyway, at worst, it will be in the same ballpark.  But it will be MUCH worse in that it's near to a major, major city and more people are affected.  The radiation levels have already risen by twenty in Tokyo, why is this not being reported more often?

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/tokyo-radiation-levels-23-times-normal-officials-2011-03-15-04540

Tuesday, the winds were going south towards Tokyo, not east to the Pacific on the jet stream.  One question is, how high are the radiated particles being blown?  Chernobyl blew them up very high, but that kind of explosion won't happen here, meaning, I assume, that they won't travel as far.  In this case they're probably lower and floating around like pollen.  Japan is living out a nightmare, and an entirely predictable one, this is exactly what happens in so many of their films, like they could see it coming.  That doesn't make it any less chilling, especially since I have more than a slight hunch about even worse things coming here.

What happens when it all gets into the waters of the Pac Ocean?