[kurthr]

Chernobyl is still in Ukrane (near the boarder with Belarus) and not Russia (yet). At the time it was part of the Soviet Union, but Ukraine has always been a bread basket of Central Europe.

Fundamentally, Chernobyl is a much larger (order of magnitude) event with 6 tons of radioactive material burned and released. Frankly, for all the coverage Fukushima gets, it's amazing that you rarely hear about the associated tsunami and the damage it caused... 22k direct casualties with 2.5k still missing, 230k people still displaced in 2015 with ~400k structures destroyed.

[ifdefdebug]

> 230k people still displaced in 2015

The displacement is mostly due to radioactive contamination still being high in several zones around Fukushima.

The tsunami was a huge catastrophe but it's over. There is no breaking news to get coverage.

Fukushima on the other hand is an ongoing disaster producing news from time to time which, naturally, get coverage.

[kurthr]

No, they are separate. Only 100k people are still displaced by Fukushima covering an area of over 400km2.

http://fukushimaontheglobe.com/the-earthquake-and-the-nuclea...

Sendai is some 50km away from Fukushima and the population center is well outside the evacuation area. Tamura and Minamisoma are the only cities within it.

The tsunami destroyed 400k structures and decimated Sendai, which (note that the figures in the linked article are in 10s of people and structures as indicated at the top of the figures). Some 300k people and 100k homes were within the inundation, ~25% of the local population.

http://tohokugeo.jp/articles/e-contents16.html

In the Fukushima evacuation area the majority of the surface is less than 4x background radition ~1uSv/hr. In discussing an ongoing disaster please look at this video:

https://youtu.be/G_0rQ9hnP84?t=477

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS_Contamination_dropping_...

https://xkcd.com/radiation/

[joshgel]

"yet" +++