From the second article: Sounds pretty benign...
“But we examined worse accidents or
terrorist events that destroy redundant plant
systems inside or outside containment,
rupturing containment penetrations,
producing ground-level, unfiltered releases.
Even in this extreme situation, the
radioactivity remains largely bound in the
fuel.
Condensing water and the physicalchemical
properties of fuel retains most
radioactivity in water and structures (as at
Three Mile Island). Condensing water limits
releases, which are not in readily dispersible
forms, nor do they remain in respirable
forms. This minimizes inhalation hazards.
Spent fuel pool radioactivity has lost the
short-lived and most volatile products and
has insufficient energy to disperse in
hazardous forms. Even hypothesized
zirconium fires would only burn cladding
and structures, external to the fuel, adding
little to the radioactivity release.
In the worst case scenario, near-plant
contamination would warrant evacuation,
but not urgently; there would be time for
evacuation without significant public
health risk. Radioactivity dispersed widely
has lower concentrations, in low-hazard
forms.”
This is a local (national) disaster physically- potentially a steaming dead zone the Japanese will have to manage for long term, affecting millions of people in Japan and possibly some neighboring countries in the prevailing wind pattern
but a global disaster economically if the entire Japanese economy goes off the grid
One bright thought maybe this will kick-start the world (the euro libs, Russians and maybe even the Chinese who benignly work round “sanctions” ) into acting with determination to make sure ideological primitives like Iran and North Korea are stripped of the ability to have nuclear facilities
Imagine North Korea or Iran trying to manage such an “incident”