Rearranging deck chairs

Still following the Fukushima story. The reports are getting eerier and eerier. First, they tried to drop sea water on the melting down reactors. That was a bit of a mess, and then once that proved ineffective, the next step was to restore power.

Its taken several days, and they are almost there.

"This is going to be a two steps forward, one step back evolution," said Michael Friedlander, a former senior operator at three U.S. power plants who has been closely following the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

In terms of restoring power at the plant, workers are "on the verge of success," he told CNN's AC360.

Now, where it gets strange is asking yourself what are they going to do with the power. They say they will try to restart the cooling systems in the 4 reactors that have been damaged for over a week. Ok, sounds reasonable.

Until you look at a picture of any of the reactors and see this.

It looks like the thing has been carpet bombed. Then you realize that the damage was done from the inside out in a series of explosions. Not only has this thing blown itself to pieces, but they've been spraying sea-water onto this radioactive mess for days in a beyond desperate attempt to cool it down, which is one of the worst things you can do as the saltwater rapidly corrodes the equipment. Does anyone really think the cooling system is intact and operational? I'm no nuclear physicist, but I can see when someone's trying to pull the wool over my eyes.

I get the spooky feeling that everyone is aware that the parts they are playing are doomed, and they know that everyone else knows, but no one is breaking character. Their collective refusal to acknowledge the un-fucked nature of this situation is kind of terrifying.