What would happen? Wasserman reports that the plant would have to be evacuated. The workers who are essential to preventing damage at the plant would leave, and we will have lost a critical safeguard. In addition, the computers will not work because of the intense radiation. As a result we would be blind - the world would have to sit and wait to see what happened. You might have to not only evacuate Fukushima but all of the population in and around Tokyo, reports Wasserman.
There is no question that the 1,533 spent fuel rods need to be removed. But Arnie Gundersen, a veteran nuclear engineer and director of Fairewinds Energy Education, who used to build fuel assemblies, told Reuters "They are going to have difficulty in removing a significant number of the rods." He described the problem in a radio interview:
"If you think of a nuclear fuel rack as a pack of cigarettes, if you pull a cigarette straight up it will come out — but these racks have been distorted. Now when they go to pull the cigarette straight out, it’s going to likely break and release radioactive cesium and other gases, xenon and krypton, into the air. I suspect come November, December, January we’re going to hear that the building’s been evacuated, they’ve broke a fuel rod, the fuel rod is off-gassing."