The Future of Fukushima Prefecture

The fate of Japan's Fukushima prefecture, where hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated, appears to lie somewhere between the outcomes at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. There were no evacuations during the Three Mile Island accident, which released about 50,000 curies of radioactive gas. Today you can picnic outside the gates of the plant without fear of lingering radiation.

Chernobyl, by comparison, was a nuclear volcano, churning millions of curies of radiation into the sky. Twenty-five years later, only official workers are allowed within 30 kilometers of the entombed reactor at Chernobyl, and radiation levels inside the zone exceed normal background radiation by factors of 100.