Originally posted by Live on earths ass
Ok,I just got up and my dad said to me that the Reactor in Fokushima will probably have a meltdown.The only thing that prevents that is the reactor shell and its unknown if it was damaged from an explosion some hours ago.Radioactiv cesium was found outside of Fokushima.This could probably end up in a second Chernobyl.They evacuated the area 10 km around the reactor and distribute Iodine tablets.
I`m not a very religious person,but all my prays to japan.
They're venting gas from one of 3 operating reactors at the time because they want to avoid a high pressure situation, but trying to compare this to an all out catastrophic steam explosion (I don't know if Chernobyl counts officially as a meltdown). Chernobyl was pieces of the reactor itself ejected up into the air and into the basement (the lid of the container flew 100s of feet into the air through the ceiling). It's really an apples to oranges situation currently.
This is nowhere near anything like Chernobyl, which was a combination of poor reactor design, maintenance, construction, a lack of a containment building, and poor operation (they were running an experiment when it happened). Evacuating people because you're not stupid and being cautious is different than evacuating people because you have to.
Maybe Sauron could verify this since I don't really understand the literature and he is more likely to, but I believe the Chernobyl style reactors (RMBK?) had something like a quasi-parabola of stability where an extremely high OR an extremely low power output would heat it up insanely.