Now I'm starting to get worried. This has been up for 2 hours, and typically the "atomic trolls" would have at least 5-6 comments up about how all of this is nothing to worry about. So I guess this is truly bad.
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/betu11_e/im... (Pu) http://www.mext.go.jp/component/english/__icsFiles/afieldfil... (Cs-137)
The activity of Cs-137 is orders of magnitude greater.
The problem is, catastrophic and unexpected things keep happening. I find the whole thing really depressing, as I think long-term, nuclear power is the best source of energy. But how do you implement it properly? That I don't know.
I've been following the pro and anti nuke arguments here and I have found them quite useful. I might not agree with the pro-nuclear arguments but they've given me a better idea of what realistic and unrealistic fears around nukes are.
For example, claims that truly minute amount of plutonium can automatically cause cancer seem distinctly over-done. See the wikipedia page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium
On the other hand, I recall the article which talked about how a reactor melt-down couldn't break containment structure because "This structure is designed, built and tested for one single purpose: To contain, indefinitely, a complete core meltdown". Well, given that an escaped-meltdown is currently considered plausible-if-not-likely, it seems there's a difference what something is designed to do and what a human-built artifact is capable of doing.
http://mitnse.com/2011/03/13/modified-version-of-original-po...
And point of this is we're at the point that ... some large of folks confidently said we could never get to... Yes, things quieter now but it does seem like there's more reason to worry...
Nuclear radiation is "natural" in the sense that's around everywhere. Given that the world's a large place, the reactor won't pollute the entire that much. Now, making significant area around the plant uninhabitable for a long time? That's looking much more likely and that's not a cost that anyone is going to see as small.
We have water giving off 1 Seivert(1,000 mSv)/hour at the plant and apparently this water is building up. Look at xkcd chart and see where that rates...