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.
Decisions about when to return to Fukushima and how to mitigate
any leftover fallout depend on the results of ongoing work to
stabilize the pressure inside the reactor cores of units 1
through 3 at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant, and to cool
the fuel rods stored in the spent