Fate of Japan and the Whole World Depends on No. 4 Reactor

[caraher]

9. A serious problem obscured by lurid exaggeration

The possibility of a fire in a spent fuel pool that's lost its coolant is a very serious problem. Obviously the condition of the plant renders safer storage of those rods a big technical challenge that must be solved, and the stakes are high indeed.

However...

It serves nobody to say patently ridiculous things like "the fate of the whole world" hangs on this. A spent fuel fire would result in locally severe contamination, and that is serious enough to make this situation an ongoing emergency deserving immediate action. But the article linked in the OP tells us

The total spent reactor fuel inventory at the Fukushima-Daichi site contains nearly half of the total amount of Cs-137 estimated by the NCRP to have been released by all atmospheric nuclear weapons testing, Chernobyl, and world-wide reprocessing plants (~270 million curies or ~9.9 E+18 Becquerel).

In other words, the worst case scenario globally is essentially 50% more exposure to fission products than we've already been exposed to. That's not a prospect to take lightly, but it's not going to wipe out everybody any more than the atmospheric bomb testing programs and Chernobyl did.

It must be taken very seriously - fallout and Chernobyl did kill - but it's scarcely going to be the end of civilization (the way, say, global warming or a nuclear war might be).