There’s been at least one fatality in Japan’s nuclear troubles. But they have a well-coordinated emergency response going on. They’ll get through it.
Some of the reactor coolant has had to evaporate into the pressure vessel. It’s that that they’ve had to release because of the build-up of pressure. It includes a modest amount of radioactive material, but it isn’t anything on the scale of TMI or Chernobyl yet, even though numerous reactors are involved.
Reactors shut down at first opportunity, as per protocol. But backup diesel generators to run the cooling may have been taken out by the tsunami.
I think some site and procedure review will be in order once everything is under control again.
I believe some radioactive material has been released -- whether more or less than TMI I do not know. But this is not likely to be anything like Chernobyl -- VERY different designs, I gather.
After my "freeway mileage run" I was looking at the fillup/mileage history and noticed one week during which I had much higher mileage than the others: 13.9 MPG as opposed to the generally around 11.8 MPG. Traced it to an "emergency" fill-up at a Shell station instead of the usual (rather lower-priced) Arcos.
Running the numbers to get miles/dollar, I bracketed the Shell fill by Arco fills because of changing prices, I got for three consecutive weeks: (arco $3.31/gal) 3.54 mi/$ -- (shell $3.47/gal) 4.01 mi/$ -- (arco $3.57/gal) 3.28 mi/$.
I didn't expect to see an 18% increase in miles/dollar across brands, but there it is. The more expensive gas might actually provide better economy. More tests are in order, and LoM will start feeding me numbers for Ealabhan, which she is driving now.