Surrealistic Cement Shoes

The wacky Japanese are at it again:

The government believes highly radioactive water detected at the No. 2 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is due to a partial meltdown of fuel rods there, its top spokesman said Monday.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told a news conference that the government believes that the meltdown was only temporary.

What? The melted reactor is going to spontaneously reassemble itself? Or maybe they mean the spewing of radiation is only temporary. But on what time scale? Weeks? Months? Years? Decades? Centuries?

I'm beginning to detect a very serious further flight from reality.

Some further research may give us an answer.

"Regrettably, we don't have a concrete schedule at the moment to enable us to say in how many months or years (the crisis will be over)," TEPCO vice-president Sakae Muto said in the latest of round-the-clock briefings the company holds.

So they expect the plant to keep spewing for months or years? And was "concrete schedule" a slip of the tongue? i.e. the only solution is the Chernobyl solution. Bury the reactors in concrete and sand.

As we used to say in the US Navy, "Someone has screwed the pooch."

My estimation of what is going on:

Criticality Accident?

Uncontrolled Criticality Accident Confirmation