See http://www.geigercounters.com/Danger.htm for example. Occupational acceptable exposure is 25x that of non-occupational.
Exposure to 1.015 mSv / hour for a year would give a dose equivalent of 8.9 Sv - the excess relative risk of cancer for low dose chronic radiation exposure is about 0.97 per Sv - so the exposure to that level for a year would drastically increase cancer risk.
Obviously, people won't be allowed into the areas where radiation levels were that high.
I saw a report of a worker acutely exposed to >100 mSv; that single event would be enough to increase that worker's lifetime risk of cancer by about 10%.
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11031219-e....
So when they say around the reactor the dose in an hour is about the same as you get a year, then this is about equivalent to two scans in a hospital.
Note: this is talking about low levels where the only influence radiation has is increasing the chance of cancer. If there are very high doses >100mSv involved, there will be direct radiological damage which can be strongly compared to damage from burning.