Reply #68: Yes. It's unconscionable

[FBaggins]

You probably think it's unconscionable that the Japanese government is scaring 300,000 people by evacuating them from their homes.

Not a bit. Why would you think that?

You seem to assume that public safety responses (not just nuclear) revolve around doing as little as absolutely possible.

In reality, they always try to go well beyond. We evactuate hundreds of thousands in front of a hurricane even though there was no danger than 100s of thousands were going to die. You just want to go above and beyond to get the risk as close to zero as possible. We evacuate whole towns in front of a forest fire, not just the six homes along the current edge. Most of the time people would have been perfectly safe staying in their homes. But why take a chance?

I can't describe the massive gap between proper caution to evacuate anyone who might be impacted, and telling people that "worse than chernobyl" is on the table. Why not tell them that it's POSSIBLE that godzilla will rise up and collect all of the reactor fuel from around the country (containment can't possibly stop him) and he's going to pile it up in the middle of every major city? 70% of the japanese population will be destroyed!

A "worse than chernobyl" event would impact FAR more than people within a 20km radius.