I got as far as the second paragraph before I knew that this was article was of dubious accuracy: "As the hot cores ceased to be cooled by the water which is u

I got as far as the second paragraph before I knew that this was article was of dubious accuracy: "As the hot cores ceased to be cooled by the water which is used to extract power from them, control rods would have remained withdrawn and a runaway chain reaction could have ensued" This is rubbish. The control rods in every nuclear reactor, going right back to the Chicago Pile, are fail-safe: if the power fails, they drop into the core, stopping fission. (In the case of a BWR like the Fukushima reactors, stored hydraulic pressure forces the control rods upward into the core). Even without fission occuring though, the fuel rods continue to produce a great deal of heat through beta decay of the fission products (immediately after shutdown, heat is produced at around 7% of the operating power). This is why a meltdown can still occur, if this prodigious quantity of heat cannot be removed quickly enough.