Chernobyl had no CONTAINMENT, it was a disaster in the making from the day they decided to build it under a tin roof....American designs are way over built to protect the public. TMI was severely damaged, but the contamination did not escape to the outside, nobody had to abandon their homes and move away....
TMI DID release to the outside... but nobody was evacuated.
Here's the thing; while I'm not a doctor, I have listened to the positions of a number of doctors in the fields involving radiation. That's why I'm not 100% on the details, but the way that they determine radiation exposure is through EXTERNAL radiation. Your skin is designed to handle all but the worst of that, but you are only radiated while you are in contact and the stuff washes off.
The difference is that ALOT of the environmental pollution winds up in your lungs, from the water, etc... including that "1.4mrems" that 2 million were exposed to, but a number of those people had the misfortune of eating or inhaling a "hot particle" and that 1.4 mRems becomes 1.4 mrems per hour until your body disposes of it in whichever way it can, meanwhile your internal organs are not designed for that kind of radioactive exposure and so are more easily affected. While 2million people were potentially exposed, the reality is there may have been 10-20 000 people who didn't just get a single hot particle, but a large dose who were then put into a higher exposure range beyond the capacity of their body to repair the damage due to their exposure and 10-20-30 years down they line they get a cancer that they would NEVER EVEN ASSOCIATE as being related.
If I had to choose between the very small chance of a few dozen people have their health adversely affected by a meltdown or thousands of people dying per year, I'd go with the former. You can point to the horrific dangers of a nuclear disaster, but where are your complaints when a coal mine collapses?
Ya, a coal mine collapses 20-40 people are stuck in a hole for a few days (hopefully less than weeks), a few people don't make it unfortunately and they continue work once the conditions are returned to a safe place.
Now, I couldn't handle that kind of work myself, short of being forced into it... but that's the kind of job where you simply have to accept the risks. Many welders, for example, have to give up their trade of 10-15 years because of the exposures they get. While it's individually unfortunate, we're all here temporarily, but life moves on.
On the other hand, if we keep pumping contaminated soil and water from Fukushima into the oceans, well, you start getting additional exposure as that radioactive debris contaminates the life cycles of the ocean and we start eating from that supply of fish.
Now, let's say there's a continuation of this recent trend of 1 disaster about every 25 years, where there's a high level of release... HOW LONG before the planet would have a background radiation of significant concern?? Once the radiation gets out into the atmosphere, like the cloud resulting from Chernobyl circled the earth for something like 4 years before the radiation was indistinguishable from the background.
And in this case, there was a radioactive cloud after chernobyl that circled the earth at least twice, and is probably still going... meanwhile, the entirety of the reactors have melted down beyond the containment and into the earth, where, with any luck will not find another water supply and contaminate some underground waterways.... I'm pretty sure it's what they call "china syndrome", or maybe that's just the movie.
To put into perspective, Fukushima was a VERY SERIOUS incident, but not earth ending, nothing to panic about, but not a trend that we should allow to continue. Since radiation takes so very long to decay.