Nuclear experts: Long-term threat from Japan's nuke plant should be small, local

The rough consensus: The long-term and most severe effects from radiation at the plant, where four of six reactors are in crisis [1] and hundreds of tons of spent fuel is a risk, will be largely contained to the area around the plant, affect a relatively limited population and will likely not spread outside Japan…

Experts interviewed by ProPublica said that even if a meltdown scenario unfolded unabated, the contamination would likely remain localized and would not affect a large population because evacuations have already been ordered. There remains uncertainty about whether worst-case contamination could reach as far as Tokyo, about 150 miles from the Fukushima plant, but few believe there is any chance of dangerous levels of contamination spreading offshore.

“The events that have happened, and the speculation for what could happen is not on the same scale as the release from Chernobyl,” said Peter Caracappa, a nuclear engineer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, N.Y. “Based on all the available information, the risk to any of the places far from the plant … would be too small to calculate with any confidence. We’re not talking intercontinental effects.”