A nuclear meltdown may yet lead to a financial one.

He lost his wife and daughter from the nuclear meltdown.

Sometimes, the nuclear meltdown may take many hours to happen.

There was also a reported case of a nuclear meltdown.

A nuclear meltdown would set back the environmental progress that we have made by decades.

The threat of a complete nuclear meltdown just 77 miles away had everyone on edge.

"I thought this would be a nuclear meltdown," he said.

And then there is radiation – the threat of a nuclear meltdown.

The government says with water being injected there is now no fear of a nuclear meltdown.

"It should not take a nuclear meltdown to make us face reality.

Such an event is called a nuclear meltdown and can have severe consequences.

Since then the talk has been more about a potential third disaster, fears of a nuclear meltdown.

Two years following nuclear meltdown, danger zone 12 miles wide remains.

Read about how to stop an emergency nuclear meltdown.

Watch: Japan fishing crippled 2 years after nuclear meltdown, below.

It is thus highly unlikely, though not impossible for a nuclear meltdown to occur.

When a powerful nuclear meltdown happened Superman himself was there to attempt to stop it.

The fear of a nuclear meltdown continues to loom heavily on everyone in the region.

Or would it be destroyed by a nuclear meltdown?

That outlook, of course, changed overnight with the escalating nuclear meltdown.

The effects of a nuclear meltdown depend on the safety features designed into a reactor.

But when it comes to the nuclear meltdown at Fukushima, there is a common theme in the two events.

There was no containment of the nuclear meltdown at the plant.”

The hope is to limit the emission of radioactive material and avoid a full nuclear meltdown.

A nuclear meltdown is where the fuel in the core of the reactor starts to melt.

The 1979 core melt accident at Three Mile Island involved one reactor.

External missiles (not applicable to core melt accidents)

One mandated safety indicator is the calculated frequency of degraded core or core melt accidents.

Haskin, et al identify six modes by which the containment could be credibly challenged; some of these modes are not applicable to core melt accidents.

"We have seen three core melt accidents in real time,'' she said, referring to Fukushima, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island.

The key is to avoid a "core melt accident," which is why TEPCO workers are frantically trying to pump seawater into all three of the damaged reactors.

'In my evidence to the Sizewell inquiry,' said Gittus, 'I say that 99 per cent of core melt accidents would not cause a melt-through of the concrete base mat.

Japanese authorities "appear to be having enough success to have forestalled a definite core melt accident that's difficult to control", said Mark Hibbs of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

A core melt accident occurs when the heat generated by a nuclear reactor exceeds the heat removed by the cooling systems to the point where at least one nuclear fuel element exceeds its melting point.