Fukushima Daiichi is a mess, and seems to be worse than we thought a week or so ago. That's not to say the situation is deteriorating--it isn't--but there was more significant damage and higher releases of radiation than it seemed at the time.
I've been reading the
Ticker Forum thread, which is still going strong with 289 pages of comments, and tons of links that I haven't had time to explore. A few of the commenters are very knowledgeable. Analog is a retired nuke plant worker, Etika is a professor of chemistry or physics (I'm not sure which), and Bigbluffer and Mikek31 seem to know a lot too. Chimichanga lives in Tokyo. I don't know whether he is Japanese or an American expat, but his English is perfect. My link goes to page 289, but you can click the page numbers and look at the earlier comments.
Here is a PDF I found there. It looks like a PowerPoint presentation, and describes the quake, tsunami, and sequence of events at the plant. I just took a quick glance through it, but it has some technical info and lots of diagrams, photos, and charts. It seems to be up to date as of April 4. It's really quite accessible and is definitely worth a look. It's 8MB, so it's better to download it to your computer rather than viewing it online.
Bottom line: Fukushima Daiichi is far, far worse than Three Mile Island, but nowhere near as bad as Chernobyl.
