Whats the Status so far:
Reactors 1, 2, 3 seem to have sustained considerable damage
Reactor 4, which was under repair at the time of the earthquake seems to have suffered structural damage and was a concern last week due to speculation that the spent fuel rods could undergo critical mass.
UPDATE: Work to recover the AC power for Unit 1 through 6 is in progress. External AC power has reached to Unit 2, 4, 5 and 6 and is now available in all the units. (You can keep up with the event on Wikipedia)
The major fear of this event is a major meltdown similar to Chernobyl whereby nearby areas were severely (made worse by the radiation clouds that blew West to Europe). The fear in japan is mainly due to the uncertainty of what is happening inside the reactors (workers had to abandon the facility due to the large amounts of radiation detected which were well above safe limits).
According to the BBC (see link on bottom)
A full body CT scan (which people can legally do) is "a [radiation] dose equivalent to being 1.5 miles from the centre of the Hiroshima explosion." We are exposed to a large amount of natural radiation each day and this is no different from radiation that comes from nuclear reactors Fear is the greatest harm that can come from this event
Whats up with the iodide?
According the a new UN report, "[contaminated milk caused by Chernobyl] led to a substantial fraction of the more than 6,000 thyroid cancers observed to date among people who were children or adolescents at the time of the accident (by 2005, 15 cases had proved fatal)". This is due to radioactive iodine being absorbed by the thyroid gland as opposed to normal non-radioactive iodine. The solution to this is of course taking a large dose of iodide (from potassium iodide tablets) and which can compete with the radioactive iodide. However, do to the fact that potassium iodide is not retained in the body for long periods of time, this is only from up to 6 hours before to after the exposure. As of writing, extremely large amounts of radioactive iodine has not been released from the reactor and hence such precautions are not necessary.
Update: There seem to have been reports that levels of radiation that are beyond normal limits are found in milk and vegetables grown in the area. This is expected because radioactive isotopes of elements behave almost identically to the normal isotopes, this it will get incorporated into the food chain. What is unclear is the amount of radioactivity since government standards are set to be extremely stringent.
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