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I was having Godzilla thoughts this morning when watching that tsunami live.

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A US agency helping Japan tackle its nuclear crisis at a stricken nuclear power plant says there is no water in one of the reactor's pools, leading to "extremely high" radiation levels.

The announcement by the chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Gregory Jaczko, came as the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi plant said it had almost completed a new power line that could restore electricity to the facility and avoid a meltdown.

Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) spokesman Naoki Tsunoda said today that officials were planning to test out the line "as soon as possible", but gave no specific time.

The line would activate electric-powered pumps, allowing TEPCO to feed a steady water supply to troubled reactors and spent fuel storage ponds so they can be kept cool. Workers at the plant have been manually feeding seawater into the reactors to prevent the fuel rods from heating up and melting down after Friday’s earthquake and tsunami shutdown all the country’s nuclear power plants.

Mr Jaczko, who was briefing US politicians in Washington, said the NRC believed "there has been a hydrogen explosion in this unit due to an uncovering of the fuel in the spent fuel pool".

"We believe that secondary containment has been destroyed and there is no water in the spent fuel pool. And we believe that radiation levels are extremely high, which could possibly impact the ability to take corrective measures."

The NRC and US Department of Energy both have experts on site at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, the Associated Press reported.

The US Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, also expressed his concern at the US energy funds hearing, saying that "the events unfolding in the Japan incidents actually appear to be more serious than Three Mile Island".

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"We believe that secondary containment has been destroyed..."

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America's top nuclear official told Congress today that the pool cooling spent fuel rods at the crippled Japanese nuclear complex had lost most of its water or all of its water, a potentially catastrophic situation.
The Japanese quickly challenged that statement, but gave few details saying only that the situation at the holding pool was "stable."

Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko said that the fuel pool at unit 4 at the the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant had lost massive amounts of water.

"We believe at this point that unit 4 may have lost a significant inventory, if not lost all of its water," Jaczko told a hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. "What we know at unit three, and again our information is limited, what we believe is that there is a crack in the spent fuel pool for unit three as well, which could lead to a loss of water in that pool."

The spent fuel rods are kept in pools of water to prevent them from overheating and ultimately melting down. The outer shell of the rods could also ignite with enough force to propel the radioactive fuel inside over a wide area.

Japan's nuclear safety agency and Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the complex, deny water is gone from the pool. Utility spokesman Hajime Motojuku told the Associated Press the "condition is stable" at unit 4.

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Dear news media:
Remember back in '50s and early '60s, when we set off something like 900 atomic bombs in Nevada? And how we just let the fallout blow wherever and it landed all over the eastern US? And how it wiped out life as we know it and all that was left from Colorado to the Atlantic were six-legged rats battling two-headed cockroaches in the glowing ruins?

Yeah. Exactly. So shut up with the panic already.

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and all that was left from Colorado to the Atlantic were six-legged rats battling two-headed cockroaches in the glowing ruins

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If you look at deaths per TWh by energy source, you find that nuclear energy is — surprise! — quite safe:

Coal (161)
Oil (36)
Natural Gas (4)
Hydro (1.4)
Nuclear (0.04)

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Seven days after the 9.0 quake off Japan, donations to nonprofit organizations have reached about $87 million, according to a tally by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, a newspaper covering nonprofits. In comparison, one week after the earthquake in Haiti, donations totaled about $275 million. In the case of Hurricane Katrina, it was over $522 million, CNNMoney reports.