Monkey, that figure was in Due's first post. I have no idea how many people live within range of a full-blown Zirconium cladding fire in Japan. Probably not bilions. US officials have said previously it would have minimal impact on us, due to the distance.
I don't think the 70,000 sq miles uninhabitable, on average, that Brookhaven Labs quoted years ago was based on this much fuel burning. One source estimated over 500 tons, Dues latest post has some interesting details on the assemblies in play. A Japanese professor said 20,000 sq km should be "devoid of people," but that is 5% of the land area of Japan and the govt made a decision tl leave the people in those areas.
I'm seeing that most of the lethal radiation fell within 1,000 miles of Chernobyl (we're over 5,000 miles from Fukushima), so perhaps most of the 500 tons or whatever it is drops into the ocean to contaminate the food chain. Also seeing radioactive kelp on the West Coast; it's unclear whether that was from Japan or grown here and contaminated from seawater, which seems improbable. And the cause of radiation symptoms in the non-radioactive seals has not been determined, as far as I know.
The Japanese professor says the pool release would be about ten times the radioactivity that has been released to date.
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