A little bit more trivia on Chernobyl I learned at Idaho State. The way they "doused" the fire was to pour tons of what our presenter called a "talc-like powder" onto the smoldering fire. Then, the place was cemented up. The problem is, like Blast said, it's still a seething hot core under there. The presenter said that there is a very real possibility of it blowing up again, this time releasing the fine talc into the atmosphere. He said the second one will make the first look like a "minor incident".

Another interesting thing on his trip to Chernobyl. They had geiger counters, badges, etc. to measure the radiation during their trip. There were signs on the road that said "keep your windows up" d/t high radiation levels and everyone was freaking out about the radiation. He then showed a slide of the levels of exposure plotted over time. There were some smaller spikes, and then one big spike at the end. That one tripled the other spikes. Someone in the audience said "Is that when you were at the Chernobyl site?" "No," came the reply, "that was because someone left the detector on during the flight home." That was when I first learned how important the atmosphere is to stop radiation from frying you.