Japan quakes

[MrToad]

a reactor can´t explode? where do u live? ever poured water on a 500°C hot surface? the fuel rods reach around 2000°C when they´re not cooled.
how much data do u think is recorded when all ur instruments are blown away by a hydrogen/oxygen explosion? and that´s no bs, they admitted, that they have no data of what´s going on inside the reactor. when a reactor can´t stand a plane crash, they really can´t, no nuclear powerplant on earth can, how do u think it can stand such a heavy explosion?

by what u wrote i can see that u strongly believe in how safe nuclear power is and how US experts know what they do and can help the japanese experts. that´s what i call bs...
right now u see that it is impossible to safely shut down a damaged nuclear power plant no matter what kind of expert u are.

Admittedly I don't know about nuclear reactors, but I do remember a experiment done is science class in school with butane gas bottles.

The fact was the amount of butane compressed an stored inside the bottle was not capable of, if ignited, generate enough pressure within the container to break the outer shell releasing explosive energy.

Perhaps the engineers did the same calculation with the reactor steel container and the amount of water you can store inside the container can't produce enough hydrogen if separation of oxygen and hydrogen happens through electrolysis to, in case of ignition, burst through the shell.

If that would be the case, and the shell is strong enough (is not a matter of material strength only, but also shape, it takes far more energy to "blast" through a cylinder with domed "ends" than it does to "blast" through a cube) then the reactor effectively can't explode.

If anything the weakest point, which making another educated guess would be the flow control valves, will give up under the pressure and release gases until the pressure within and without the container equalize. But I don't think this qualifies as an explosion. Would qualify as an uncontrolled discharge of gases potentially carrying radioactively charged particles, but according to my basic physics it wouldn't be an explosion.

As I said this is just an educated guess based on very basic physics, I don't have any formal training as a nuclear engineer.