The invention relates to nuclear power industry, namely to systems providing safety of nuclear power plants (NPP), and can be used during severe accidents leading to reactor vessel and NPP containment failure. The melt cooling and confinement system includes a cone-shaped guide plate installed under the reactor vessel bottom, cantilever girder installed under the guide plate and supporting the same, core catcher installed under the cantilever girder and equipped with cooled cladding in form of a multi-layer vessel for protection of the external heat-exchange wall from dynamic, thermal and chemical impacts, and filler material for melt dilution inside the multi-layer vessel. The said multi-layer vessel has external and internal metal walls with a filler that is highly heat-conductive in relation to wall material in between, where filler material thickness hfil meets the following criterion: 1.2hext< hfil <2.4hext, where hext is vessel external wall thickness. The technical result of the invention is the increased efficiency of heat removal from the melt and improved structural reliability