It's interesting to see how this going. The quantities involved are hard to put into context, but I get the impression that the story would be very different if this reactor had been somewhere upwind of Japan's major cities, such as in the Fukuoka area.
A civilization is a heritage of beliefs, customs, and knowledge slowly accumulated in the course of centuries, elements difficult at times to justify by logic, but justifying themselves as paths when they lead somewhere, since they open up for man his inner distance.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery