So, basically, MSNBC did a crappy job of writing their article -- it should have...

foobarbazetc · on March 12, 2011

Yeah, but every news agency is.

The BBC had a "live feed" of a huge blazing fire, and the caption was "Government declares Nuclear Emergency".

The fire was at a natural gas storage tank...

I don't know if these news agencies like stoking mass panic, but you need to be a little sceptical about reporting in the media about "contentious" issues like nuclear power.

Here's the IAEA post about the current issue:

http://www.iaea.org/press/?p=1133

It's standard procedure in these situations to evacuate a 3km radius from the plant, just in case. If the situation gets slightly more... interesting (as in, they need to vent some steam), they evacuate 10km.

TL;DR: Let's wait and see what happens before declaring that Japan is about to be annihilated by nuclear fallout.

Edit: here's the current status of each reactor:

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11031207-e.... http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11031212-e.... http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11031213-e.... http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11031214-e....

I.e., all shut down. Need cooling. Pressure being vented in the Daiichi reactor.