Originally posted by OccamAssassin
Compared to Chernobyl, the Fukushima plant clean up seems to be doing well.

Don't compare Fukushima to Chernobyl

Again, the casualty figures tell their own story. Severe potential hazards did exist on the reactor sites because of high levels of radiation, but health controls were mainly effective.

There were no deaths attributable to radiation. Two workers received burns from beta radiation. They were discharged from hospital after two days. Two workers incurred high internal radiation exposure from inhaling iodine-131, which gives them a significant risk of developing thyroid cancer.

Doses incurred by about 100 other workers have been high enough to cause a small risk of developing cancer after 20 or more years. But the risk is very small indeed. About 25 per cent of the population dies from cancer whether accidentally exposed to radiation or not. This rate might be increased by an additional one or two per cent among the exposed workers.

What is more, exposures to radiation were nowhere near high enough to cause acute radiation sickness. Importantly, there have been no radiation injuries to children or to other members of the public. The INES was intended to aid public understanding of nuclear safety. In fact, it has caused more confusion. It has also probably added to the mental anguish of the Japanese people.

The accident at Fukushima Daiichi was moved to the top of the scale a month after the tsunami for technical reasons, when the estimate of radioactive material released exceeded the International Atomic Energy Agency's criterion for level 7. However, the amount of iodine-131 escaping from all the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi was less than 10 per cent of the amount released at Chernobyl, and the release of caesium-137, the next most important fission product, was less than 15 per cent of the Chernobyl total.