christopher simmons' the associate professor at duke university explains our design of the book ashima reactor could potentially contain the damage if the worst case scenario occurs. this reactor is cool entirely by water. i'm ill founded simply when the nuclear materials cannot be cooled and the temperature rises in the containment area and the reactor materials themselves to the point at which they destroy the reactor that surrounds them of course these temperatures have to reach about five hundred degrees celsius for the metal and for the uranium itself probably in the order of eight hundred to one thousand degrees celsius. the good news is that that in the daiichi reactor the coolant is entirely water so a material venting into the atmosphere will likely just stay think a radioactive steam in the case of shear noble the reactor was moderated by graphite and graphite holds the radiation and spritz much further as dust and gas so. that was the significant problem with sharon noble the the neutron moderator in the airplane that reactor was different and the radiation could spread much