I guess here's the rub. If reactor operates at full power, the fuel element lasts like 3 years before being put into that nice "safe pool". The fact that reactor scrammed, means that the operating power is down to less than 1% in matter of days, and dropped to 6% in about 1 second. So now's the b.tch of a situation - this energy is still all there. So if you had 3 years to spend it, now you got 100. So effectively this crap has to be either safely stored in water OR it goes kaboom and releases all this nuclear energy in one blast. Can it happen? I don't know but they are suggesting it this US speech they made just now. Since there is many of them together, they melt, etc. And reactor 3 has Plutonium as well which makes it the most dangerous.
Really, this is bad, very bad, and very very bad. I think it's going to blow up and we'll have a massive fallout for 200-300 km. And Japan is done as a power for long long time. We can also expect another recession globally as a result because let's face it, fuel prices doubling through speculators will not help the consumers already full in debt, while increase tension further because now countries like Iran, Russia, and other oil rich nations get a chance to REALLY show what money can do.
My only hope, is that from this: 1) New ways of dealing with nuclear disaster are learned 2) people acutally survive it better than Chernobyl 3) renewable's research steps up a notch, lead this time by government and not private companies which aren't motivated enough it seems and 4) the world calms the fak down, because lately the whole political world feels like this Daichi powerplant.
If this was a movie, in a last possible moment some engineer woudl throw some yogurt/baby panda/ipod at the reactor and that would stop it completely and voila we have found a strange way of fighting radiation and world is saved. But as people who follow dating advice from movies know, movies and real life just ain't the same thing.