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In reply to the discussion: So it turns out that nadinbrzezinski was correct re Fukushima [View all]AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)Chernobyl exploded, you know that right? Not just 'blew up'. Fukushima Dai-ichi certainly suffered explosions as well. But Chernobyl's core went north of 33gw thermal output, before the instrumentation failed, and stopped recording, and fully exploded. No containment. When the lid flipped over, that's it yo. That was the bare, naked, burning core thrown INTO THE SKY. Probably around 80% of the entire mass of the core burned, or was flung out of the housing. Fully naked. No containment.
Reactor 1 in the Dai-ichi complex is the worst of the 3, and its core is sitting there, in the catchment, inside the containment housing that Chernobyl's RBMK's doesn't even have. That generation RBMK has no containment at all. Do you understand that? No containment. I feel compelled to say it several more times.
Fukushima had containments. They scrammed the cores. And yes, they cooked when the cooling failed, and melted through the RPV, but they didn't get through the containment that Chernobyl didn't even have. The hydrogen explosions just made a fuckawful mess out of everything. That's it. Spread contamination. They didn't huck the cores, burning, INTO THE SKY. There's a slight difference in scope and scale here.
Chernobyl reactor 3's bitumen roof caught fire when pieces of the core from reactor four, fuel and graphite, landed on it. Slightly different.