English-French translations for meltdown

• craquage
• fusion du cœur d'un réacteur nucléaire
  Mon troisième point est qu'ici, dans l'Union européenne, depuis Tchernobyl et bien avant Fukushima, nous avons plusieurs fois frôlé un accident de fusion du cœur d'un réacteur nucléaire. My third point is that we in the European Union have been on the threshold of nuclear meltdown several times since Chernobyl and long before Fukushima.

Definition of meltdown

• Severe overheating of the core of a nuclear reactor resulting in the core melting and radiation escaping
• A situation being likened to a nuclear meltdown; a crisis
• A tantrum

Examples

• Four years have passed since the meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear plant, but the grim legacy of the Soviet catastrophe is still unfolding. [https://web.archive.org/web/20041130094534/http://www.time.com/time/daily/chernobyl/chernobyl.index.html]
• Computer engineers were at a loss last night to explain why the Government had been hit by arguably the worst electronic meltdown in the history of Whitehall. [https://web.archive.org/web/20041209011615/http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=587262]

Related words

• melt
• cameltoe
• smelt
• smelting
• meltwater
• melting
• melton
• smelter
• unmelted