What happened at Fukushima?

Fukushima is, paradoxically, a story of nuclear's resilience. A magnitude-9 earthquake and a massive tsunami — among the largest disasters in modern history — knocked out cooling at three reactors, yet the reactor radiation caused no confirmed acute deaths.

The tragedy was the overcautious response: a sweeping evacuation, driven by very conservative dose assumptions, caused real harm to displaced and elderly people. That's prompted a healthy debate (hence contested) about whether the evacuation did more harm than the radiation. The lesson many now draw is hopeful: nuclear is safer than our fears, and excessive caution can be its own hazard.