As bad as it is, Japan’s nuclear accident is dramatically less catastrophic than Chernobyl. That accident spread millions of curies of radioactivity — 3-4 per cent of all radioactivity in the reactor core — around the surrounding countryside, exposing millions of people in several countries. Large areas are uninhabitable to this day. Here, there is no real prospect of a runaway chain reaction as occurred at Chernobyl. Instead, what has happened is the melting of fuel in reactor cores, leading to the release of a very modest amount of cesium and other fission products.
As bad as it is, Japan’s nuclear accident is dramatically less catastrophic than Chernobyl. That accident spread millions of curies of radioactivity — 3-4 per cent of all radioactivity in the reactor core — around the surrounding countryside, exposing millions of people in several countries. Large areas are uninhabitable to this day. Here, there is no real prospect of a runaway chain reaction as occurred at Chernobyl. Instead, what has happened is the melting of fuel in reactor cores, leading to the release of a very modest amount of cesium and other fission products.