ScienceDaily: Like much of the rest of the world, thousands of scientists and engineers watched in March 2011 as Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors exploded. The chain of events began when a magnitude 9.0 earthquake off the coast of Tohoku caused a tsunami that destroyed the ability to cool the fuel elements in the reactors. The fuel's cladding, a zirconium alloy used to contain the fuel and radioactive fission products, reacted with boiling coolant water to form hydrogen gas, which then exploded, resulting...