It’s very hard to get your arms around what’s happening with the Japanese reactor meltdown since most of what you read is either disingenous apologia for nuclear power in general or baldfaced lies (or more charitably confusion) about what’s actually been happening on the ground.
As near as I can tell the current problem is a big one. The fuel rods are burning. This is because the temperature produced by these still hot (and I mean that in the normal, don’t let your cat sit on the stove, sense) units is above the point where the casing and filler start to burn like a Brillo pad you light with a match.
Now unlike oil or electrical the best way to put out these fires is with water which cools the rods and slows down the nuclear reactions that heat them up in the first place. The problem is that in these conditions water also breaks down into it’s component elements, Hydrogen and Oxygen, and Hydrogen just happens to be explosive. Indeed one of the most confusing parts of the story is how many explosions there have been and where, but bottom line is a lot and in many places.
In any event each explosion has created more damage in addition to releasing radiation that has made it periodically impossible to continue fighting these fires without getting a toasty fatal tan.
Now there are other things you can do like dump a pile of Boron (even better than water for reaction reduction, not so good at cooling) on top and cover the whole damn thing with concrete.
That’s what they did at Chernobyl.
The problem is that there aren’t huge piles of Boron just sitting around and most of the brave Russian pilots tasked with that mission, ummm… died of radiation poisoning.
So the situation is fluid to say the least.
The NHK live earthquake coverage in English is on the right.
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