"the precipitating earthquake was still the strongest in 1200 years"
People keep mentioning this as if that matters. The fact is that it happened, and there's really no telling when future natural disasters will strike any given nuclear plant. All we know is that they can happen and that if disasters on this scale do happen, nuclear reactors are not up to surviving them.
"Reactor 4 is on fire, and is releasing radiation into the atmosphere, but on nowhere near the scale that Chernobyl did."
Yet.
But this disaster may be far from over.
"There's been a few people (~12) who suffered radiation exposure, I believe all plant workers."
That's not what I'm hearing. From a former nuclear industry executive and whistleblower interviewed recently on Democracy Now:
"they talk about 160 people that have been contaminated. That’s all they’ve tested. Basically, everything they’re testing is coming up contaminated in that inner couple of miles around the plant. You’ve got radiation being detected 60 miles to the north in a Navy helicopter, a hundred miles to the east on a Navy aircraft carrier. So, it’s not clear to me that that cloud is not looping around and affecting Japan."
As far as contamination goes, my information is ~12 hours out of date, so I won't argue that point. I will point out, however, that it's not the level of radiation that matters, but the specific isotopes causing it. Radioactive Iodine, for example, is particularly dangerous because it has a relatively long half-life and naturally concentrates in the lymph nodes. Shorter-lived isotopes, like N-16, will contribute to high radiation levels but not have any real health effects.
As for this not being on the same scale as Chernobyl, I doubt even a full, uncontained meltdown would be as bad as that. Chernobyl made heavy use of graphite, which burned for a long time, spewing long-lived fallout everywhere. Fukushima I uses a different design, with less inherent risk.
People keep mentioning this as if that matters. The fact is that it happened, and there's really no telling when future natural disasters will strike any given nuclear plant. All we know is that they can happen and that if disasters on this scale do happen, nuclear reactors are not up to surviving them.
"Reactor 4 is on fire, and is releasing radiation into the atmosphere, but on nowhere near the scale that Chernobyl did."
Yet.
But this disaster may be far from over.
"There's been a few people (~12) who suffered radiation exposure, I believe all plant workers."
That's not what I'm hearing. From a former nuclear industry executive and whistleblower interviewed recently on Democracy Now:
"they talk about 160 people that have been contaminated. That’s all they’ve tested. Basically, everything they’re testing is coming up contaminated in that inner couple of miles around the plant. You’ve got radiation being detected 60 miles to the north in a Navy helicopter, a hundred miles to the east on a Navy aircraft carrier. So, it’s not clear to me that that cloud is not looping around and affecting Japan."
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/3/14/japan_facing_biggest_c...