Is Seawater a Last Resort to Cooling Japan's Nuclear Reactors?

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As the situation at Japan's 40-year-old Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant goes from bad to worse--four of the plant's six boiling-water reactors have been damaged by explosions or fire, and radiation has begun leaking into the atmosphere--officials there continue to pump seawater into the reactors in a desperate attempt to cool down fuel rods and avoid a complete meltdown that could release radioactive fallout across much of the country and beyond. The move by Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), which operates Daiichi, to use seawater doped with neutron-absorbing boron in the reactors' pressure vessels all but ensures that they will never function properly again, permanently damaging one of the world's 25 largest nuclear power stations. [More] (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=japan-earthquake-tsunami-nuclear-seawater)

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