And a meltdown and vessel compromise, while not a good thing, may be the only way to disperse the molten fuel to reduce it to non-criticality.
We are beyond the point of hoping for a happy ending. Now we need to focus on the least sucky bad ending.
The question is: What's underneath? And were these reactors constructed with a post compromise dispersement capability?
Anyway, mega kudos to ASWnut101 for the comments on radiation fear mongering. It is very easy for the public to be misinformed by misunderstanding what is being reported.
And way too easy for the news media to deliberately mislead the public in the interest of news revenue. Why a news media would feel it necessary to make this seem worse then it is. This disaster is not good enough for them?