when a neutron...

...and a uranium nucleus decide they really love each other and want to spend the rest of their lives together...

Can't stop following Japanese reactor news. I have enough of a grasp of the background physics to tell what news is significant and what is hysteria and know enough about radiation to understand what environmental release is significant and to be frustrated at the specific details that are important and are missing.

For example, knowing the measured dose rate at the front gate of the plant doesn't tell you much unless you know how far it is from the reactor, which most stories omit, because the writers and editors don't know it is important. Gamma radiation decreases at least as fast as the distance squared, so based on the numbers I have seen of measurements at the gate, you really want the population at least 10 times as far from the reactor as the plant gate. (Trying to find the numbers for the dose rate again, I found a Japanese newspaper(? or something) that does know that the distance is important, and mentions that it is 1.5 km. Does this mean Japanese reporters understand radiation a lot better than American reporters?)

The really weird thing is that there are supposed to be endless redundant safety systems designed to work in the event of a power blackout at the plant, and it looks like they ALL failed. We need to know how this could have happened.

Added: News from the International Atomic Energy Agency is accurate and technical , but not timely. I like the continuous text updates from the BBC news feed(with the video off). Figuring out what is going on requires me to have 3 clocks on my computer screen, PDT, GMT, and Japanese time.