[thehhhyips]

As you say, early to judge but certainly can't see any way it was a simple building collapse due to the violence and wave front evident (refer to ~48s in the second video, may be hard to see in that low res' version) - I hope you're right and it was a secondary building/system that exploded, rather than a critical one or the main containment vessel.

Been a long time since I was reading up on Chernobyl but IIRC there were several problems, localised runaway reactions causing instantaneous explosions, the late addition of cooling water reacting with the superheated graphite causing secondary steam explosions and the burning graphite carrying off radio active particles in its smoke and convection currents.

Do you, or anyone else, have any info on the apparent flooding at the site after the tsunamis, etc, receeded? I was wondering if the actual ground levels had dropped as a result of the earthquake.

They're still replaying the clip - zoomed in there was a large building that completely blew apart! It looked like one of the reactor buildings - just to the right of the exhaust stack tower - I sure hope it was some other support facility, but it didn't look good as, looking at other previous images, it looks like what was identified as a reactor building - sometimes you really want to be wrong!

If you keep watching this - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world/asia_pacific/ - it should show it again.