According to this NPR report, the Japanese are lucky because it’s not the partially-spent fuel rods that caused spikes in radiation levels around the Fukushima nuclear reactors, it was just material from the reactor core.
Along with officials in Japan, independent experts in the United States and Europe are investigating the source and nature of the radiation released. But it looks like most of the material likely came from the reactors themselves, not from the pools of used fuel that have caused such concern.
Like, the reactors aren’t anything to worry about? Were people really more concerned about the spent fuel pools than the reactors or is that sort of a deflection of concerns?