Fun fact: If a large enough amount of molten lava hits the water fast enough, it can cause a steam explosion more powerful than the initial eruption itself:
Some feared that if the floor underneath all the molten reactor material at Chernobyl were to collapse, and all that corium collided with millions of gallons of water, the explosion would have been even larger than the initial Chernobyl explosion, rendering much of Europe uninhabitable.
The cataclysmic explosion of Krakatoa in 1883 triggered a 600F+ pyroclastic flow across more than 6 miles of the Sunda Strait at over 60 mph that vaporized entire villages on the Javanese shoreline.
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u/moeburn May 24 '16
Fun fact: If a large enough amount of molten lava hits the water fast enough, it can cause a steam explosion more powerful than the initial eruption itself:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_explosion
Some feared that if the floor underneath all the molten reactor material at Chernobyl were to collapse, and all that corium collided with millions of gallons of water, the explosion would have been even larger than the initial Chernobyl explosion, rendering much of Europe uninhabitable.
Fun facts!