[quote=KSMountain]That article was sensationalist and misleading in my opinion. Exclamation point in the title should have been an immediate clue I guess.

He says “The failsafe systems failed” without ever mentioning that the control rods dropped automatically, as they were supposed to.

Not to imply the situation isn’t very serious…

I’ve been trying to follow this super closely. If anyone has a link to an agenda-free site with detailed current information, I’d love to know about it.[/quote]

If anything, the Big Think article underestimated the risk. The failsafe systems did indeed fail. Control rods are only used to stop the nuclear reaction. Continuous flow of water is then needed for months afterwards to cool the fuel. In this case, the backup power failed, they ran out of battery power, and the backup systems that should have provided a constant flow of water also failed.

The site you linked to clearly has a pro-nuclear agenda.