All any other toxic waste that comes from photovoltaic panel production. Even the panels themselves create serious hazard for the environment when they'll be about to be disposed.

Not to mention energy saving light bulbs. EU has forbid mercury based thermometer sales, but energy saving light bulbs are ok, eventhough they contain mercury and about a dozen other toxic materials...

Roads?

However, nuclear waste isn't of a decent problem too.. Well it's somewhat costly, but doesn't imply a serious problem for us, except for the expenditures. AFAIK: The idea is that due to the decay, even after graving all the wastes we would produce during the duration of them becoming no longer radioactive- we won't occupy any significant square on the planetary scale.

I find the energy debate hilarious. Where I'm from we have air conditioners. People drive their dinosaur juice machines to the corner store. Buildings leave their lights on 24/7 by law. We smother our entire country in street lights. It is so obvious what needs to happen. We need to choose who is allowed to use energy and who is not, and unfortunately the only option is to raise prices to levels that cannot be afforded.. and that's much better than doing nothing about it. These things are luxuries. They're modern, but they are still luxuries.

The problem isn't that we're not capable of generating enough energy. The problem is that we live in a competitive society where people disagree because it's the most enjoyable thing to do with their time. People are so incredibly wasteful with the energy they do produce. I mean, get real. Most of them sit and watch TV stuffing their face with garbage food, drive everywhere... It's disgusting. There isn't an energy problem, there's a society problem.

Gnolam's absolutely right. Billions of humans need to stop existing. Start with the fattest ones... government problems everywhere.

The earthquake was an act of the omnipotent god. He hates Japanese people.

Why do you keep following BBC (and/or other media)? Flames rising from the reactor? WTF does that mean? Do they even know what a reactor is?

Anyway, the second fire in unit #4 was caused by an oil leak on a pump that was pumping sea water into the spent fuel pit of unit #4. The fire was burning for 140 minutes, then went out by itself. It's not clear if the pump in question still works or not though, but I would guess not.

There's also more trouble at unit #3. White smoke is rising from the reactor building which indicates the containment vessel is probably damaged. This means both #2 and #3 containments are damaged. The reactor vessels are still OK of course.

Chernobyl*

It's supposed to not let the radiation out, even in case of melting. But we already see it doesn't look like the case.. Perhaps they're still able to seal it to prevent further contamination, but I am somehow getting doubts regarding it.

Yes. Maybe some of the cores partially melted. The latest report said the water level in rector #2 was 1.7m below the top of fuel elements before they pumped sea water in. This means over a third of the fuel in reactor #2 was without cooling for some time which means it's possible it melted. But we probably won't know for sure for quite a long time. When the last similar accident happened in America in 1979 (TMI), they didn't know the core melted until 4 or 5 years later when they were first able to visually inspect the reactor.

No. The consequences will be bigger than TMI though.

That's not true. It's supposed to not let the melted fuel out, but some radiation still gets out through steam that needs to be vented to reduce pressure. There are special valves just for this purpose. And because the fuel elements have been damaged, the steam is contaminated with radioactive fission products, thus radiation gets out. Also it seems that #2 and #3 containments have been damaged so the contaminated steam is escaping into the environment uncontrollably from units 2 and 3.

It did, but because of the steam explosion that took away top part of the reactor vessel and blasted a hole into the reactor building. Mind you there was no containment around that particular RBMK.

Three Miles Island, as Miran was referring to, was a different architecture - PWR. Fukushima I has similar design called BWR, both are build with a containment building and such explosion that occurred in Chernobyl is virtually impossible.

The only problem could be possible reactor vessel breach due to the core meltdown, because apparently the containments have taken some damage from the hydrogen explosions.

Which brings me to a question for miran: shouldn't there be hydrogen-oxygen recombinators to prevent such event?

Because I know that they're journalists who get every technical detail wrong, and I can usually figure out what they really mean.
(The alternative is "no news")

Oh hey, you can watch NHK online as well: http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/index.html

... also, for the hilarious typos:

Wired seems to have an uncharacteristically informative article about the danger of radiation leaks and their causes.

First report I saw was 36..