However, the cooling system worked (only half of it, but it was overengineered so that half of it is enough anyway), so that wasn't even close to a meltdown. After 20 minutes, the emergency was over and the reactor went into regular hot standby.
Exactly one nutjob went around telling everyone that this was close to a meltdown and had they waited another 10 minutes (as is custom in such a situation) everybody would have died (and then some). It is completely beyond my comprehension, why the press is only listening to the nutjob and not the scores of engineers who testify to the contrary.
You don't need to believe me. Just research PWRs for yourself a bit. You'll find that there is absolutely no way (physics ensures that, and physics isn't even turned off on weekends) that one could melt within 30 minutes or even 30 hours.
And without cooling you get core damagae partial meltdown and stuff within about 2, not 30 hours. These aint passive reactors. But of course, neither are they evil RBMK's.
But of course, it was all blown out of proportion by the media and said nutjob.
By the way, I live 70 km from that plant. No worries for me. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
Indeed, a BWR is a easier to damage, but "core damage" aka "partial meltdown" is a far cry from Chernobyl... it's also a far cry from release of anything radioactive, and it's the latter that might happen after about three days, unless the containment is cooled. (Assuming Forsmark has a typical containment, accurate technical information is hard to come by.)
