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Even with fail-safes in place, which apparently there was because the core did not go into hit that level of uncontrollable chain reaction like Chernobyl, it still takes juice to keep the thing from blowing up. Shutting the reactor down in itself is a slow process; the heat takes weeks to dissipate. Compound that with the fact that there is no power to operate the auxiliary cooling mechanisms, even with the reactor shut down, there is going to be heat building. These things are meant to take a beating, but even as prepared as they were, it still means a lot of shit can go fatally wrong.
Even so, in the best of circumstances, they will seal off the reactor and call it a loss, like we had to at Three Mile Island. Hopefully an aftershock doesn't mess things up worse and send it critical.
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