A third explosion affecting the last of the three reactors occurred this morning. This re-qualifies the nuclear incident into an accident (level 4) on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES). To give you an idea, only two nuclear accidents in history were worse : Chernobyl (level 7) and the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania, USA in 1979 (level 5). Of course it's too soon to tell if it won't degenerate further. I personally don't see how it wouldn't reach at least level 5.
The radiation levels at Fukushima now exceed 8,000 microsieverts per hour, 70,000 times the legal limit of 1,000 microsieverts per annum. If I didn't mistake in my calculations, this equals 2 sieverts per day, or 14 sieverts per week. In terms of radiation poisoning, this means that people staying in Fukushima will already suffer nausea and vomiting after half a day, might start having other symptoms like headache, diarrhoea, and fever after one or two days (with a mortality rate of up to 50 percent), and most likely won't survive an exposure of more than 3 days.
The big question now is how far away from Fukushima does it become safe ? Chernobyl left a no-man's land in a 100 km radius, with fallout landing on a 300 km stretch to the north-east (Russia-Belarus border - see map). The nuclear plant is actyally located in Okuma, 75 km south-east of Fukushima city. It might be necessary to evacuate at least the region of Sendai, Aizu-Wakamatsu and Shirakawa, which are all in a 100 km radius. Tokyo is 250 km away.
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