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Message: <blockquote data-quote="audioholic" data-source="post: 7256159" data-attributes="member: 549629">Ah, thanks for the update (I still havent checked the news).Chernobyl was a dry pile, the cooling mechanism is literally just a giant pile of carbon blocks with the rods stuck in them. A dry pile can only cool so much. Once the pile is saturated with heat and the rods are still getting hotter, a meltdown in impossible to stop. But US built reactors use water for cooling. Assuming power is present, you can always pump in fresh water to continually renew the cooling process. Its much, much harder to have a meltdown in a wet reactor than in a dry pile. Usually the worst that will happen with a wet reactor is off-gassing of radioactive steam, to relieve pressure build up from the water evaporating while cooling the rods. This off-gassing is bad, but its a lot better than a Chernobyl style meltdown.</blockquote>

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