Quote Originally Posted by dice View Post
I still don't understand what exactly is happening at the power plants. I have a cursory understanding on how they work, but here we have explosions and people aren't exactly freaking out... and these things have been pretty much off since what saturday? Wouldn't they have the control rods balls deep in those reactors within minutes of the quake? Why are they still hot?
The control rods stop the fission reaction. You still have the radioactive decay to cool no matter what. Once fission is stopped this reactor still roughly produces 5%? production from radioactive decay. This reactor is ancient in this day and age.