past the hour here in moscow you with our team recap the top stories now the crisis of the quake hit the fukushima power plant in japan and worsens as reports say a partial nuclear meltdown is under way as the country is struggling to control the damage caused by the earthquake the official death toll has risen to over four thousand with more than eight thousand it still missing. as radiation levels continue to rise from japanese authorities claim there's no imminent threat to people's health but the country's track record of covering up past nuclear problems

makes me doubt the official version of events. and in that libya pro-government forces are retaking more land from the rebels meanwhile the un is such a discuss imposing a no fly zone over the country a measure of posed by most states. unless the situation in japan deteriorates the world it's left with the big questions over the future of nuclear power he spoke to nuclear physicist walt patterson who shared his thoughts on what we can learn from the ongoing events in japan that's coming your way next. today i'm talking to robert patterson who's an associate fellow at katz and house and author of the or fell of a book on the power industry called keeping the lights on well pass and thank you very much for talking to r.t. now the situation in japan is bad we've seen several explosions at fukushima nuclear power plant what do you think the chances are that we may see more and the

situation herring are i'm sure that the people working on the site hope that they've got it under control but they seem to be releasing an awful lot of hydrogen from at least three reactors and now from a fuel point as well and hydrogen is an explosive gas if it's confined mixed with air it produces it can produce very dramatic explosions as we've seen so that's clearly a major concern for them but i think the explosion problem is almost the least of their problems at the moment because what it has done to the reactors we don't know we don't know who hasn't apparently damaged the containment or the reactor pressure vessels themselves although i gather there may be a hole in one of the containment some in that unit too but what bothers me and i haven't heard any very good confirmation about it is what it is a turn to the actual contact between the control room and the reactor itself

whether the whether the dials engages in the control room are now actually giving reliable information about what's happening inside the reactors particularly because the sensors for temperature and pressure and water level and so on in the turbulent conditions that have been happening in those reactors must be the sensors must themselves now be potentially unreliable which means that the the engineers in the control room don't actually know what's going on in the reactors and what could be going on in those reactors in your. the problem is that they may have water levels rising and falling they may have fuel exposure we know that they have had fuel exposed which just produced the reaction the reaction between the the molten metal cladding and the water that produces the hydrogen so they've they've certainly had some fuel them which they may well have fuel ceramic fuel pellets that are now also circulating through the core and that will be clogging up

channels and generally generally changing the configuration the geometry in the core and unless they're reacting unless the reactor engineers know what is going on they're liable to do something wrong they're liable to do the wrong thing that's what happened with the x. of the three mile island in the united states that engine engineers who thought they were doing the right thing to protect the protect the core. open valves when they should have closed them and vice versa and wound up exposing the core and causing a major meltdown and you've mentioned that they get rainy and run in reactor number two africa seem away state and we know that they were at state that me for a period of time how dangerous that well the rig the fuel fuel elements when they're running in the reactor with the chain reaction running the buildup of radioactive waste in the fuel rods themselves gradually accumulates quite a sizeable inventory of very hot radioactive waste and when they talk about the

reactors all shutting down at the time of the earthquake which means that they shut down the chain reaction but you cannot shut down the radioactive waste and anything up to ten percent of the heat in the reactor core when it's when it's when it's running comes from the radioactive waste not from the chain reaction you can shut down the heat from the waste and that heat means that you have to keep taking the heat away or the temperature of the fuel rods goes up very fast and what has happened in i think all three units now is that the fuel has been at least partly exposed such that it then allows its own temperature to go up until the level tubes melt. and the metal cubes melt and the little fuel pellets what are just like little sweeties fall fall down the uranium fall falls down into into the water and of course the problem that produces is that if enough of them fall together they can start up a chain reaction again and despite all this and what you're talking about

a sort of self-perpetuating scenario the government in japan can thank thank you panel to find something for people to worry about do you think that's helping the whole tree i'm not sure they know the whole truth that's part of the problem i mean in a circumstance it would be bad enough if it were normal times but this is after an earthquake and an enormous tsunami and the communication channels and the normal organization even of a society as organized as japan has taken a terrible hit so the fact that they're now faced with a problem like the nuclear problem and they already have more on their hands than anybody could possibly imagine with that with the earthquake and the aftermath of the tsunami where. it's brutally brutally difficult for the for the both for the government and for the people of japan and the rest of the world we always say that patton has a reputation as one of the world's most technologically advanced countries and yet they've been struggling to call these react without for days now what are the

factors that play back and saying well i think one of the factors is that precisely the fact that the this is a nuclear power is a very very complicated technology and its track record of actually dealing with some of the implications of the of the inherent inherent characteristics of this work of the state of reactor is not good i found last night an article what i wrote nearly forty years ago describing an intense controversy in the united states a boat to performance precisely of the so-called emergency cooling systems on water cooled reactors in the performance was criticized by independent experts in the u.s. but then nuclear establishment the u.s. atomic energy commission we've the concerns aside this was at a time when fukushima alone was being built. and the same the same problem is

inherent in this kind of reactor the only kind of reactor that anybody is building now anywhere in the world these reactors were originally built as power plants for submarines and obviously the overall the overriding design criterion is that it has to be compact enough to fit inside the hull of a submarine and that means that it has to produce an enormous amount of heat in a very small oil and the only way that it can do that is with very very high pressure water which means in turn that the walls of the reactor the boiler the reactor pressure vessel have to be twenty centimeters thick and this poses all kinds of safety problems if there is any possibility of the pressure being lost or even worse if the pressure vessel itself might happen to be breached. and these are the problems that these engineers are now trying to cope with and in japan some commentators on that back saying it is starting to look a lot like chinalco what do you think about that i hope that we're still going to

be a long way short of a third of a chernobyl here particularly for one reason that even if there were a major release of radioactivity from one or more of the reactors the event to chernobyl was accompanied by an enormous fire which produced a huge plume of hot air carrying radioactivity right up into the stratosphere and that radioactivity was then carried all over the planet by stratospheric winds i think that i can't think of a mechanism that would distribute radioactivity on that kind of scale from anything that could possibly happen to fukushima but we have heard that they have already had some fires including a fire in a fuel pond when which the cooling apparently failed and any kind of any kind of heat source like that will at least produce some kind of updraft to lift some radioactivity of some kind into the into the upper atmosphere into the into into

the wind where it can be carried some distance and obviously they're lost the fact that plane whether that's a fire in which direction the wind blows the lid but what what what are the chances that a radioactive cloud could reach russia from japan. i think very low i think very low for one thing the prevailing wind is not in that direction and for another thing as i say i can't think of a mechanism that would lift a significant amount of radioactivity high enough for it to travel that kind of distance so i don't think i don't think there is any any reason for concern. for russia or for north america for that reason japan is a very unstable geographically in terms of us quake and yes i would definitely have chosen to build a little nuclear power station space and also that how supplying nuclear energy do you think this will change the attitude to nuclear power in japan i'm think it is bound to there have been of course there's been quite

a substantial body of opinion in japan including among the seas knowledge just that building nuclear plants anywhere in japan is not a good idea my personal feeling is that building nuclear plants anywhere is not a good idea for basically economic reasons they're very expensive they tend to be unreliable they are a kind of electricity which is very inflexible and difficult for an electricity system to use because you can lose a thousand megawatts in two minutes and one way in another i have never been persuaded that the economic case for nuclear power is especially convincing and in recent years of course that has been the major controversy about nuclear power investment all over the world private investors do not want to spend money on nuclear plants for quite understandable reasons they don't think they could get their money back but now the safety issue has come back again and that will complicate things even further and of course we haven't had

a big nuclear accident really since so not the right one thousand nine hundred eighty six so that people love to be in even that nuclear power is becoming safe that well well at least it's partly that but i think a much more important factor is that until quite recently nobody has built a new nuclear plants not in the west there have been no. no nuclear plants ordered in the us for example since one thousand nine hundred seventy eight and since then and every plate ordered since one thousand seventy four has been canceled up until the last couple of years when there is suddenly begun to be an great deal of u.s. government taxpayers' money on offer as subsidies for construction of new nuclear plants and even that is not persuading the companies in the us to build them so the the the reason that people have not been objecting to nuclear power her past twenty years is that nobody's been building them so now you're going to get a situation which i think mitt might turn into a rerun of the kind of controversies of the first generation of nuclear plants in

the late sixty's and seventy's when the public was deeply unhappy about a lot of these plants and we may well find that happens again well pat thank you very much. please. please. sports is political in ways we don't often even notice especially on the level of culture where our ideas and attitudes as a society are shaped limit. the ties between professional football and the u.s. military have existed since the start of the n.f.l. back in nineteen twenty that relationship really meant slaves during world war two and today that bond is stronger than ever and. your intention is to kill kill kill continue killing to look at recent history has taught us the sports is never just something that we just sit back. and sports always have an important social function and the history of american sports is no different.

place. play. a key player.

live live live. the headlines here on r.t. and of the crisis at the quake hit fukushima power plant in japan worsens surfboard say a partial nuclear meltdown is under way as the country is struggling to control the damage caused by the earthquake the official death toll has risen to over four thousand with more than eight thousand still missing. as radiation levels continue to rise japanese authorities claim there's no imminent threats of people's health or the country's track record of covering up past nuclear problems makes many official version of events. and in libya pro-government forces are retaking more land from the rebels meanwhile the u.n. is said to discuss imposing

a no fly zone over the country and measure opposed by most states. and i'll be back with more news in about fifteen minutes time but first the sporting news with kate . hello welcome to the sports news and here are the headlines one foot in the semifinals lucky my teeth and scar takes me ice in the bid to trace each other out in the next round of the cage show playoffs. while edging through months united and holders into the long reach the champions league quarter finals against him gary victories. and carrying on bishop we need a russian who is taking cliff diving to new heights. but first let's start with the continental hockey league playoffs where looking much youth unscarred was just one win away from lining up a seven final meeting against each other both clubs all three were not in their best of seven series against another riga and atlanta respectively and both have

home ice advantage since wednesday night those matches placing off just over top of the house curves mean once all of that could have gone into the stomach amazon cheers day that's defending champions at a state they want washed in their series thanks to a timely formula way when four different players were on the scoresheet for the visitors in far so at last and now three one it's to have to win all their remaining matches to reach the last fall. so governor that's why they knew the office being sat in the other contests have been god needed to record a hundred minute speech mesler and tie the series outs to all and that was the longest ever match entire trial history size made in three overtimes as there are no penalty shoot outs in the playoffs. football and holders into milan by a new take on the way goals and runs to not have narrowly lost sight of go through to the quarter finals of the champions league final came from

a goal down to one of the half hour now that was the snyder level growth fund is lost on strike three two to the defending champions on a night three three and i guess and into through to the last eight on the way goals in the other side i have a hammer on this score in a chart as manchester united one two want to time to moss play reza bradford through his own net late song following the first leg goal a story of france the united went into the quarter finals two one overall high praise for manager sir alex ferguson. i think they are surprised i think. it's. just first of all in equipment. his innocence should. play musically more. serious. is adjusted to their physical very well and it was too many minutes you know no.

options and this evening chelsea have a great chance of making friday's quarter final draw as may take on copenhagen at stamford bridge with a two away goal cushion from the first leg. brace in denmark has given the blues a stronger vantage run into a column for latif says he rightly taken proponents and taken lightly even though they've never won an england in this tournament. because it would be very important to move on. fire all the time because luke you're going to have to pay a lot of attention when our guys are going to him we're going to do a show that it will be ok i mean you it's. just trying to broker a world of the interesting for. when the rubber on the show now. so few people giving the visit as much of a chance in london some nights but copenhagen not a jet star lifestyle back and says the tie is far from over and could be decided by whoever scores first it's so easy to say that it's don't do it is how we should see

in this war the first goal if we score the first goal will change the. psychology in the game. is obviously. different and you have been in this one situation once before and then we beat the odds to nearly nonstop down so we are going for it while in the other day this wednesday night rail madrid take on little of the good bye and seems to one want in the first leg of the rail system with range having been knocked out by the aug eighth last year being eliminated at the last sixteen stage of this competition for the last six seasons there's a ring it says both sides of the finger question. i think the passion applies to this competition who does not hold competition everybody knows that. after the match one team goes through another team goes home. everybody knows that. the next tranche one another theme we watch on t.v.

and that's. the pressure to accomplish what is. good is not gold. no culture is moving to the europa league where three russian clubs. bathrooms trying to get into the last eight on thursday have the best chance of all three after winning one out i.x. in the first leg that's powerhouse controlled most of the game and still travel to the stadium with a want away goal deficit the red and whites have a warning more so in the last three years in fixtures topping off twice. once however spot time will be eager to put in a strong performance after their embarrassing ordeal demolition this will go last monday and moving on stay south of the arguments at the dramatic defeat in their first leg i don't support so the moscow side had plenty of chances but didn't manage to upset their rivals goalkeeper so the portuguese powerhouse a one nil advantage ahead of the second clash meanwhile both strikers bogner love

and say to do are expected to shine in life and short of it is actually taste as leading goalscorer with four strides to his name so far. funny thing is in it's the same piece that side came away from the upside gets it twenty with a disappointing three note of the day nevertheless the defending russian champions manage only china's military is confident his side will be able to overturn this deficit the strikers are on the because of the medics on the persian gulf are back in reading after injury problems and let's go all out to score early in the match. and it's now some big names have been stunned at indian wells where u.s. open champion kim clijsters was the first to go out after being forced to retire from her fourth round tie with a shoulder injury the belgian won the first set against marion bartoli of france six trying. to stop the world number two said she would have trouble with that shoulder popping for travel to miami and the next three. months that is the defending. serbian lost and hopefully kept it on a run of h.

six four six two this is tied tightly to. one of egypt and the other was the nineteenth save face but it's really nothing to find and that wasn't the other surprises obviously francesca schiavone lost in three sets to hear from israel although the world number one caroline wozniacki research with or to kyle's help to survive really scare against russia at least that clip on her feet. however not really surprises in the men's draw but a fighter a chinese prime ignacio chela if anyone is taking a first love i'm going to take the second sixty. and also into the fourth round it's going to be that is really hard and even more convincing win against ernests gulbis six six one is on the screen.

and we finish with one of the newest and most exciting extreme sports cliff diving in competitive terms it's just over ten years old and there's one russian. already established or. briss taking this is clearly turning the really extreme where a human being and nature become one. one of the newest force in the planet as it became competitive only in two thousand following hellboy and work tradition which is a were two hundred years old and rochelle already has a clean diver to be growed off and join solution. to twenty six year old kids of his first victory at the real world series enormous last year and enter a decision as the favorite along with nine turn will jam band along. and last season's winner bare hands one of the world's most isolated and mystical places up

a newly erland is jews most whistle point and they keep the venue for the twenty to leaven world series and the reigning champ and was the first in show an impressive dive hill which was only now up to secure third place on the day if the next step on the platform sutra into choosing what is currently one of the most complicated. and if they do offer direction big fans. but it wasn't enough to work on the colombian grandmaster of fleet diving pit history moment was just flawless really happy really proud i think. it paid off the training i did in the off season . my dives are feeling pretty comfortable. that was my plan to improve on the existing dives and maybe workers i mean i've got cars working good help in maintaining for the rest of the season however

a suit claims to have what it takes to be diligent i played second place in this competition and this is just this is a rebel group that. we're careful long season new surprise new. shows. i hope more fills. i'm so so happy to the it's good stuff from there and we close with a few more dice to keep in the memory well looking forward to you know the cleveland inventor and the next stage of the world series will be held in mexico in the temple april roberts well known party. and that's of course this person. culture is the so much fun to play with you finish your mind more when the arab world power of people's hopes and the deadly reactions of tyrants are tunisia and

egypt leading the way for our libya. home. mom.

wealthy british scientists are told some time. markets. find out what's really happening to the global economy for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines to name two kinds of reports. first cream removal cold clear cutting. second to explain some started blasting away deeper than the jurors. heard the remainder by machinery. finally on the mortgage is deposited to invent a few. modern companies on the margin are hungry for the full story we've got it firsthand.