The deteriorating situation at the Fukushima power plants is worrisome. The 24-hour news coverage, which ended only yesterday, has abruptly resumed – this time focusing not on the earthquake and tsunami, but on the nuclear crisis. Panic in Tokyo is on everyone’s mind. It seems that the only respectful thing to do is to hunker down and pray.

In this new posture I feel helpless. I watch the television for hopeful signs, but there are none. The analysis and commentary being broadcast come from industry experts, who attempt to explain the situation in layman’s terms, pointing to hastily prepared Styrofoam models of Fukushima’s six reactor buildings.

Units 2, 5, and 6 are modeled to show the unbroken façades of their containment buildings, each wrapped with blue-and-white checkered murals that belie the dangers within. Units 1, 3, and 4 are modeled to show the ruptured skin and collapsed girders left by the hydrogen explosions and fires of the past few days. The commentators point to the various critical components at the facility: the torus-shaped water-cooling systems located in each basement; the steel reactor vessels that hold the enriched nuclear fuel; and the pools of spent-fuel rods, oddly suspended in what looks like attic storage. The props remind me of a dollhouse, and the commentators, pointing to the various components – as they dispassionately talk of hypothetical scenarios – look like puppet masters. I am not comforted. My critical faculties are unable to assess the truth of the commentary.