Japan and chernobyl not on the same page.

Most of the news about Japan to be rather cryptic so I decided on my own research from the data provided. to start with the Fukushima Daiichi plant may contain over 600,000 spent fuel rods. that have been spent over the past 20 years Chernobyl had around 12-15000 from about 3 years in operation, that difference is enormous and very deadly depending on its exposure to life and the environment,

Fuel rods must be kept submerged in water. Without water bathing, the radioactivity in the used rods become so hot they begin to catch fire. "These fires can burn so hot the radioactive rod contents are carried into the atmosphere as vaporized material or as very small particles. Reactor no 3 burns MOX fuel that contains a mix of plutonium and uranium. Plutonium generates more heat than uranium, which means these rods have the greatest risk of burning. That’s bad news, because plutonium scattered into the atmosphere is even more dangerous that the combustion products of rods without plutonium." As some Nuke engineers put it It would be like Chernobyl on steroids!

" Although Tokyo Electric said it also continued to deal with cooling system failures and high pressures at half a dozen of its 10 reactors in the two Fukushima complexes, fears mounted about the threat posed by the pools of water where years of spent fuel rods are stored. At the 40-year-old Fukushima Daiichi unit 1, where an explosion Saturday destroyed a building housing the reactor, the spent fuel pool, in accordance with General Electric’s design, is placed above the reactor. Tokyo Electric said it was trying to figure out how to maintain water levels in the pools, indicating that the normal safety systems there had failed, too. Failure to keep adequate water levels in a pool would lead to a catastrophic fire, said nuclear experts, some of whom think that unit 1’s pool may now be outside. “That would be like Chernobyl on steroids,” said Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer at Fairewinds Associates and a member of the public oversight panel for the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, which is identical to the Fukushima Daiichi unit 1. People familiar with the plant said there are seven spent fuel pools at Fukushima Daiichi, many of them densely packed. Gundersen said the unit 1 pool could have as much as 20 years of spent fuel rods, which are still radioactive."