The events unraveling in Japan is an extreme situation for a country living in extreme conditions, dealing with disaster after wave of disaster. This is not the same for other Nuclear facilities around the world, and this would include the United States.
Japan has several things working against it in refferance to their enviroment, where in most other area's of the world, area's are not subject to this many natural disaster type enviroments. Where Japan has many factors that can work against their present situation, the odds of any other plant being exposed to this many different impacting enviromental changes are near nullified by their geographical locations.
What is a Nuclear Meltdown? First lets look at the basic structure and functioning mechanics of a Nuclear Power Plant, which in this day and age is no government secret.
CLICK HERE FOR A CNN description of a reactor, and what happened in Japan.
As you can see they were having issues with the system after the initial quake, it is the tsunami that elevated the situation when the water hit the electrical backup systems. This is an extreme case of a domino effect, and reveals that it was a string of accidents, not just one act that has caused their situation.
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