What's happening at Fukushima?

[FBaggins]

43. Chernobyl was worse in almost all ways.

Yes, the clean-up at Fukushima is worse... but that's because they intend to actually clean some things up (this being Japan we're talking about and not the Soviet Union).

But the total release from Chernobyl was somewhere in the neighborhood of 10-100 times as large as Fukushima. To make matters worse, a much larger proportion of that release was in longer-lived isotopes (since physical pieces of fuel were expelled from the core in the explosion and fire). Even cesium eventually fades away over decades... but elements like strontium and plutonium hang around for far longer (and Chernobyl released thousands to millions of times as much)

The impact of Fukushima to the ocean was of course much higher... partially because the bulk of the total release ended up in the Pacific - but mostly because Chernobyl wasn't on the shore.

The impact on human health is not even close. The expectations of a free society like Japan cause the government to receive (warranted) criticism for how they managed the crisis, but it was nothing like Chernobyl. By comparison, people were evacuated earlier and checked for contamination. Stable iodine was distributed to most of the at-risk population. Medical equipment is far better... and studies began almost immediately (along with the associated follow-up checks). The end result being that Chernobly killed hundreds (likely thousands, though most cannot be clearly identified as such), while Fukushima still hasn't killed anyone (from radiation), and it's still quite likely that we won't be able to attribute any to Fukushima radiation (though again, it's likely that statistically there will be a handful).