If its upgraded to a level 6 accident by everyone, not just a panicky, wants to be on TV frenchman, then most people would considering it the 2nd worst nuclear accident to date. The worrying thing is, its clearly esculating, its esculating and its spreading as heat and radiation, explosions appear to have caused the probems at the other reactors(at least partially) and as radiation gets worse, less people are on site, dealing with worsening situations gets harder and harder.
Nitefly, I've said before, at some stage you have to consider what happens in unforseen circumstances, what happens when EVERYTHING goes wrong, everything, and how much damage can happen there, the reward should be weighed against THAT risk, not the "what if everything goes right" risk.
Asides from that, either the two worst nuclear reactor incidents, or two of the top 3 now, were caused by human error, not the plant itself or the poor or great design. If the people working in Chernobyl or Threemile had not made critical errors neither accident would have happened.
The best designed reactor can still fail by human error and over riding, enacting something too soon, turning something off. In the case of Three mile all the safety systems kicked in IIRC, they turned off the safety systems because they thought the situation was "fixed" at that point.
Now plants after that will have, more automation maybe and lock out the ability to make the same mistake, but ultimately there will still be something else someone can do to screw it up.
Who knows if nuclear is worth the risk, one problem at the moment is, what would happen to the world if we end up without coal, or basically got to the point no one could afford to buy what was left, then what? What would happen to society when communication, entertainment, most peoples jobs all turn off..... I dread to think. Will it happen in our life times, who knows, can renewable catch up to our power usage, nope, can our current world economy cope with a dramatic cut back in power usage, nope. Is nuclear fuel and a few accidents a better option than simply running out of power and having society meltdown instead........... probably.
