Japanese Death Toll Rising to Above 9,000
MALVEAUX: From Japan, some grim news. The death toll from the earthquake and tsunami has climbed above 9,000 now. More than 13,000 are still missing. Smoke is still rising from two crippled reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant and tests have detected radiation now in sea water near that plant, as well as in the tap water. Now, Japanese health officials say that babies in that area should not drink the water. The U.S. Military may evacuate thousands of troops and their families in Japan as a precaution against radiation. Our Jacqui Jeras is going to map out for us exactly what is happening at these damaged nuclear plants and these specific reactors still very much active, it seems.</s>JACQUI JERAS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes, absolutely. We're going to start you out with a little bit of good news that CNN has just learned. And that is that in reactor number three, the power has been restored to the control room. So that is a little bit of good news. That's all we know about that. It doesn't necessarily mean that the cooling system is working, but that's good news and certainly moving in the right direction. There's six reactors in all. Five and six do have working cooling systems and they're working on a generator. So the big focus now, reactors one, two, three and four. And so, let's break it down for you. We're going to start out with reactor number one and those fuel rods that have the nuclear stuff in it have been partially exposed. The building itself, look at that, has been severely damaged, but the containment vessel, they're saying, isn't damaged. So that is good. And they're trying to get power restored to all of these, obviously. Now, number two, the fuel rods here have been exposed too. The building itself hasn't received as much damage. There's some here, but look at it. It's mostly intact. But it's what's inside that's of concern, and that's that core and the shell that surrounds the core that there could have been a little bit of damage in there and that's the concern. They hope to have power, they're hoping to have this done on Tuesday as well as into the middle of the night now as we head into Wednesday morning. But the seawater that they've been pumping into reactors one and two caused a little more damage than they thought. Seawater has salt in it, so it's corrosive and they're going to have to repair some of the parts in the building before they can get that power up and running. All right, we'll take you into reactor number three. This is the one that has the power restored now into the control room. Of course, they're hoping to get power throughout the cooling system altogether. The fuel rods have been partially exposed here. The other concern are those pools that we've been talking about that contain the spent fuel rods. They've been pumping the water into there, trying to keep them cool. The building itself has been severely damaged, so there's really nothing in between that pool and the blue skies. So that is of great concern. And they do have that power, as I mentioned, restored in that area. And last but not least, this is reactor number four. And take a look at the extensive damage that's been caused to the building. In this area, there was one fire here and also at least one explosion. The building damaged severely. The pool containment is the primary concern. So that is the one holding those spent fuel rods. They're having a hard time keeping that full. There's a little bit of a question as to whether or not maybe that has been compromised and that the water has been leaking out and that's why they're having a hard time keeping that full and keeping that cool, and they do hope so restore power to that, again, in the next -- it could happen any time. They're hoping for Tuesday. Obviously, we've passed that window. Hopefully we'll find out some more good news like we did with number three.</s>MALVEAUX: Well, we're hoping for the good news. That's all very informative. And we're going to be speaking with an operator who operated in three different plants in the United States to talk about the timeline, just how fast, how quickly can they actually resolve all of that that is taking place.</s>JERAS: Well, it's been amazing that they've been maintaining these pretty well over the last couple of days. Other than that smoke that was coming out of number three on Monday, we haven't seen anything major occur. That's good.</s>MALVEAUX: OK. Good news. Thanks, Jacqui, appreciate it. We'll have more after the break.