Partial nuclear meltdown at Fukushima 'no disaster', expert says

Partial nuclear meltdown at Fukushima 'no disaster', expert says
Any partial meltdown of nuclear fuel in a quake-hit power plant in Japan "is not a disaster" and a complete meltdown is unlikely, a German industry expert said on Sunday.
Robert Engel, a structural analyst and senior engineer at Switzerland's Leibstadt nuclear power plant, said he believed Japanese authorities would be able to manage the situation at the damaged Fukushima facility north of Tokyo.
Engel was an external member of a team sent by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to Japan after a 2007 earthquake that hit the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, until then the largest to affect a nuclear complex.
"I think nobody can say at this time whether there is a small melting of any fuel elements or something like that. You have to inspect it afterwards," he told Reuters by phone.
But a partial meltdown "is not a disaster" and a complete meltdown is not likely, he said, suggesting he believed Japanese authorities were succeeding in cooling down the reactors even though the systems for doing this failed after the quake hit.