Currently the problem is the pumps that circulate cooling fluid through the reactors core (usually not water but some lava like stuff) are not working. Ironically, they do not have any electricity to run them. Go figure. Also, the water that cools the cooling fluid is not circulating also. I am sure they have gasoline generators or something trying to generated electricity to run the pumps. Things are getting really really hot, like, 1500 degrees Fahrenheit (800 C)or more. Iron melts at about that temperature. They are trying to keep things cool by pumping and dumping water directly on the core containment building so it does not melt and release a huge amount of serious radiation into all of northern Japan.
The explosions you may have heard about are caused by the water they are dumping on the power plant. The seawater is getting super heated and causing it to separate into its elements, hydrogen and oxygen gases mostly. Well, that is one of the types of fuel they use on the Space Shuttle engines. So with all that heat and hydrogen and oxygen, you have explosions.
A Melt down is mostly everything getting way too hot (10,000). The containment building, the concrete floor (thirty feet thick) and even the ground surrounding the core will melt, fall apart, blow up, and all of it will become radioactive and escape (radiation) as a gas into the atmosphere. That is what happened in Russia, Chernobyl. If they have a melt down, half of a million upper, middle and lower class people will have to move, PERMANENTLY.
For more information, check out The China Syndrome. It was also a pretty good movie.
I am praying for the people in harms way on this and wisdom for the people trying to solve the problem.
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