The problem is not only that we thousands of miles away are not experienced nuclear power plant engineers, but that we are relying on the quality of information coming out of Japan. The government has a vested interest in tightly controlling any potentially damaging or dangerous information so as not to create a panic, which may well lie in conflict with any given individual's interest in staying alive and healthy. Large-scale organisms such as governments strive to protect the organism as a whole at the cost of a few cells, in the same way that we may not think a great deal about the death of a few muscle cells or even, in extremis, a limb.

It's also entirely possible that even the thousands of experts hell-bent on analyzing this catastrophe and the Japanese government itself don't know exactly what's going on, and how much to worry. A lot of this is simply new territory to be studied empirically in real time and through later forensics, despite a fairly thorough understanding of the design and theory. Ah, modern science - how you bless, how you curse.

Me, I'd be getting out of Dodge if I had anywhere else to go. Sadly most citizens there probably do not. It's just a horrible situation and a scale of human grief light years beyond personal comprehension.