radioactive material since the disaster despite efforts to clean it up dr robert jacobs the hiroshima peace institute says that the evidence brings into question to plants nuclear safety. and there is certainly a great deal of evidence that appears to suggest that the first reactor reactor number one was melting down by the time the tsunami hit so if that's the case that the reactor was melting down as a result of the earthquake and not as a result of this you know need a nine point zero earthquake or something that has the potential to end up in too much of here and that would put the reliability and the design and safety of all of these reactors in question so when you have a structure that's already suffered a great deal of damage and you have a continual going after shocks at the level of six point zero there's there's been some even higher. what we have now is we have the radioactive core that is melted down into the basement into the bottom of the containment vessel of these reactors and if the radiation level is going down where it's being monitored inside the building and if the water pressur

wave reached them joining me now via broadband is dr robert jacobs who's a professor at the hiroshima peace institute how alarming are these latest reports about steam emerging from the cracks under fukushima how serious could this. it's a very serious and alarming development because this started to happen specifically after two large earthquakes in the last few weeks there was a six point four earthquake on the thirty first of july and a six point zero earthquake on august twelfth and so what this would indicate is that there may have been some breaking of some of the pipes and some of the structures underground that happened during these earthquakes and they there could be radioactive water that's venting into the soil and what's more as the it has cracks are opening they're making their way that steam and radioactivity is making its way up so first of all this will make it much more difficult for workers to work there because the problem will not be contained within the building contained within the structure of the reactor vessel and so it's harder for workers to work in an area in which radiati