boom

Here goes Chernobyl all over again. Japan becomes a nuclear wasteland and everybody dies. :(

Actually due to the way that such things spread, only a small area ever gets affected. IIRC the strength of a cloud of radiation (or any other cloud:P) decreases with the square of the distance, barring extenuating circumstances (IE, part of the cloud being caught in a jetstream). Even at Chernobyl (which was WAY worse that what happened in Japan) you don't have to get very far away from the site of the accident before everything is ~normal again.

it is now classified as level 7

As it should have been from the beginning:P. That doesn't change the fact that Chernobyl was *way* worse than what happened in Japan. Those rating systems are... broad, to say the least.