It's obvious that the problems of the nuclear power plant at Fukushima in Japan, affected by both the earthquake and the tsunami of last Friday have been like that of bloodied prey for a school of sharks that is the media. On TV One's Close Up program on Monday, Mark Sainsbury quizzed expert Ron Smith, "the worst case scenario is what?" - probably hoping that the answer would be "it will blow up like a big atom bomb" judging by his final question, "in the worst case scenario will we be affected, will this spread globally?"
While this power station is obviously kaput, it's also obvious from the informed analysis that it's not going to be another Chernobyl, probably a worse version of Three Mile Island, from which no-one died. A health analysis of the Chernobyl disaster is here. A big increase in ambient radiation is obviously bad for you, but a small increase isn't going to hurt you; in fact there is even some counter-intuitive evidence from the Chernobyl data that it could even be good for you.
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