Japan Nuclear crisis could last 2 to 3 more months, expert says -- and by "says", they mean "guesses"

Japan will likely need two to three more months to bring an end to the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, a nuclear industry official said Saturday.

Takashi Sawada, the deputy director of the Atomic Energy Society of Japan, said Saturday that it was likely to take that long to restore normal cooling systems for the damaged reactors at Fukushima Daiichi.

The plant's coolant systems were knocked out by the March 11 tsunami, causing three reactors to overheat and producing what Japan's government has designated a top-scale nuclear accident.

Sawada's organization is an association of nuclear engineers, scientists and professors, and it issued a Friday report that he called "our best effort to imagine what the core looks like."

That report concluded that the zirconium alloy sheaths that surround the reactor's fuel rods ruptured in the three units, sending pellets of molten uranium tumbling to the bottom of the reactors. The pellets are since believed to have cooled and solidified at the reactor bases, according to the report. (read more)