5 ms·

How many people would have died if that happened?

• Manuel_D 4y ago
  I always get a chuckle when people insist that the water under the core posed such a serious threat, given that the original reactor failure was caused by boiling water. The reactor failed after the water temperatures produced too much pressure for the pressure vessel to handle. This exposed fuel rods to atmosphere, at which point they started to burn. This is what produced the most severe contamination (that, plus debris from the reactor being ejected). To stop this, loads of sand, boron, and lead were piled onto the ruptured reactor, eventually burying it. The concern is that the molten fuel rods underneath this blanket of material would melt through the concrete below and come into contact with water. But with no pressure vessel to contain the boiling water, it would not produced nearly as much pressure as the original failure.