“We will certainly not die from Fukushima, but the citizens in Japan will be ill from it.”
I don’t think any rational person is saying that there won’t be negative effects from the Fukushima disaster.
However it is not the end of the world, and it is not a reason to abandon nuclear power.
Radiation doesn’t scare me. I respect it but do not fear it. I think all of the “atomiphobes” (my word, free for all to use) are that way due to ignorance. They only know what they read in the papers or hear on the news. (IE: they know very little)
You can protect yourself from harmful amounts of radiation exposure in the vast majority of likely imaginable scenarios.
What scares me most is biological and chemical weapons, and I have had a fair bit of training on that subject as well.
Nuclear power is not very dangerous until an accident occurs. It is not like a coal plant where 30 years of cleanup means all traces of damage are corrected.
If we just built reactors deep underground, disasters such as Fukushima would be a non-issue. Plug the hole and move on. Unfortunately we have so many reactors on fault lines, bodies of water just waiting to be flooded, attacked, or otherwise damaged they can essentially become a dirty bomb with all of the on-site waste located there.
We are not doing the right thing by building these plants so close to water supplies and at sea level or near oceans and fault lines. Build them deep underground. When fuel is expended, bury the fuel, then the reactor later on. Problem solved.