Coal puts radiation into the atmosphere 24x7 as standard operating procedure.
People don't seem to appreciate that the reactors withstood the earthquake fine, even withstood the tsunami fine, the onsite generators and fuel were destroyed by the tsunami but everything was ok for the 8 hours they had battery backup power.. then things went downhill. I believe newer setups have the generators underground, if that'd been the case here we wouldn't be having this discussion.
40 year old Gen 1 reactors that were designed to operate 25 years, one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded, and we're still talking about a limited area being affected.
Though things aren't really over or totally under control yet, so the full impact remains to be seen.
I think the public anti-nuclear sentiment will be riled up again though, and that might have an impact on new reactors going up.
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