i’m near the fukushima power plant!

i'm 110 miles (170 km) southwest of it in Tochigi. If it melts down, how far away should i be to avoid radiation?

news reports here in Australia say authorities are evacuating a 10 klm radius

the reactor just exploded and they won't tell us if the core broke or not.

NHK news says that the radioactivity level at the border of the Fukushima atomic energy plant is 1015 micro Sievert per hour, which is more than 10000 times higher than the normal level. It also says that the building is broken after a big bang sound at around 15:30. I am afraid that the fallout might spread around the plant site. Please keep attention to the news.

UreshiiMiko,

They never said that the reactor exploded - there was an explosion-like sound followed by white smoke, so they took some time to investigate exactly what it was, and it was confirmed that it was neither the reactor nor the containment vessel containing the reactor that exploded, but somehow there arose some hydrogen inside the outer building, which mixed with oxygen and led to an explosion, which destroyed the outer building walls but not affecting the containment vessel and the reactor. It was evidenced by the fact that the radioactivity level did not rise after the explosion.

Still the alert is high and there is an evacuation alert for residents in the 20km radius from that no. 1 plant, but so far the worst has not happened. They have decided to use seawater to bring down the temperature around/inside the vessel.

The building housing a reactor was destroyed, but the authorities said the reactor itself was intact inside its steel container.

From what the BBC pages explain, this very likely means that only very little radioactive material escaped. The evacuation zone is 20km when I write this. No reason to panic but keep following the news closely, including the foreign media.

A second reactor appears to have lost it emergency cooling system now in Fukushima.
Keep an eye on the Reuter webpages, they seem to have the information quickly and are usually accurate: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/12/us-japan-quake-nuclear-cooli...

you are a long way away so no need to panic. people have been evacuated in a 20km radius. after each kilometre the radiation drops dramatically.

a melt down conatains a lot of meaning. your biggest concern would be radiation carried by the wind. at the moment the wind is blowing away from you and should continue to do so until monday night...