Question:
Were they able to contain it? I cannot find the answer.
Answer:
You can follow the progress of the event from day one here:
http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/2011…
Reactor #1's fuel was 55% damaged (which is what meltdown means). This is down from the first estimates of 75% damaged.
Reactor #2's fuel was 35% damaged (up from 30%)
Reactor #3's fuel was 35% damaged (up from 30%)
Reactor #4 was off-line with the fuel in the cooling ponds.
Reactors #5 and #6 were in stable shut down.
The containment vessel contained the nuclear fuel, unlike Chernobyl which had about half it's highly radioactive fuel spread all over the countryside. When nuclear fuel rods overheat they produce hydrogen gas. In Chernobyl this gas built up and blew the top off the reactor. In Fukushima, the gas was vented and built up inside the building exterior shell and exploded. This damaged the building, but not the containment vessel. It took a few weeks to get instrumentation working again so the results have changed over time.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/cherno…
If anything, the situation shows how safe nuclear power is. Consider that forty year old plants were hit with an earthquake five times the strength they were designed for and yet they still shut down safely. The generators came on like they were supposed to when grid power was cut. Then the tsunami hit and the generators were wiped out. However, the battery backup still worked for the designed eight hours. The problem happened when no new generators could be put in. Even so the problems have been minimal--media scare mongering for ratings not withstanding.
Here is an informative article describing the situation:
http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/13/fu…
And here is where you find current, factual status information:
http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsun…
And a slide presentation that describes the effects:
http://www.slideshare.net/iaea/radiologi…
And here is a chart that helps make sense of the numbers:
http://www.xkcd.com/radiation/
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