UPDATE:

Earthquake Japan

The Japanese authorities have officially CONFIRMED a Level 4 Nuclear Accident at the #Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station 1 #Radiation – NHK

More:

The Japanese government rates the accident at the Fukushima Number One nuclear power plant at level 4 on an international scale of 0 to 7. [...]

A level 4 on the International Nuclear and Radiologocal Event Scale includes damage to fuel and release of significant quantities of radioactive material within an installation. It’s the same level as a criticality accident at a nuclear fuel processing plant in Tokai Village in Ibaraki Prefecture, south of Fukushima, in 1999.

Original post:

For two days, I’ve had people on Twitter, one a known liberal, try to convince me that nuclear energy is just fine thank you, and that the amount of radiation coming from the Japanese nuclear reactors is harmless.

Please stop.

Nobody can convince me that nuclear power is a safe, clean source of energy. It’s not clean, because what do we do with all that waste?

And it’s not safe because, well…

Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) said March 12 that the explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi No. 1 nuclear plant could only have been caused by a meltdown of the reactor core, Japanese daily Nikkei reported. This statement seemed somewhat at odds with Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano’s comments earlier March 12, in which he said “the walls of the building containing the reactor were destroyed, meaning that the metal container encasing the reactor did not explode.”

NISA’s statement is significant because it is the government agency that reports to the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy within the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. [...]

It is difficult to determine at this point whether the NISA statement is accurate, as the Nikkei report has not been corroborated by others. It is also not clear from the context whether NISA is stating the conclusions of an official assessment or simply making a statement. However, the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), the operator of the Fukushima nuclear plant, also said that although it had relieved pressure, nevertheless some nuclear fuel had melted and further action was necessary to contain the pressure.

This is also being reported on CNN.

H/t: cjohanns