[nkssy]

Ok, I know nothing about nuke power. That said, I have a few questions:

Nuclear power is just about making steam isn’t it? Its ultimately about using heat to boil water, isn’t it?

Why can't they continue making steam from this reactor? Its not exactly cooling down, is it?

[rocqua]

You could, but its not producing that much heat.

Moreover, a normal reactor has two loops. The first is an internal loop that moves heat from the core to a heat exchanger. The second is an external loop that takes heat from the heat exchanger and turns it into steam that goes to a turbine.

This is done because the internal loop gets rather contaminated with radioactive materials. Turning that contaminated water to steam and venting it to the outside world is... bad.

[s21n]

Yes, it's cooling down, very quickly.

There is no reactor anymore, it's just melted fuel that flowed into rooms under the reactor vessel but it cooled quickly and now it's just a warm rock.

Nuclear reactor is constructed in a way that the neutrons from fission are reflected back to the fuel to cause more reactions so the reaction rate is kept stable at a very high level. When the reactor was blown out by steam it lost most of it's power in seconds because the structures that kept the chain reaction running not existed anymore.

The conditions at the spot where the fuel is deposited may change due to environmental factors, for example when rainwater sinks into the fuel or it evaporates or runs off (water is a neutron moderator). That may cause temporary surge in fission reactions but it's still nowhere close to an operational reactor.