Well, let's see. In this case we've had a bunch of nuclear power stations very close to the site of a historically-large earthquake and the ensuing tsunami, large enough that even with Japan's outstanding disaster-preparedness thousands or tens of thousands of people have died. That would seem to be pretty much a worst-case scenario.

And, so far, all the troubles at the nuclear reactors have produced a grand total of zero deaths. Now, for sure, it's too early to know what the final outcome will be. Maybe there will be a Vast Nuclear Holocaust that obliterates Japan. (No, the laws of physics do not in fact permit this, but that objection applies equally to a number of other nightmare scenarios people have been proposing.) But so far as anyone can tell, the worst outcome that's at all likely is: a few people die, a few square km of land become unusable for a while, and they need to rebuild from scratch somewhere else. Well, that's pretty bad, for sure. But if that's the worst-case outcome from such a major natural disaster, it seems to me that -- so far as what we know right now goes -- nuclear energy is still looking pretty safe overall.

(Note: I am not a nuclear energy lobbyist.)

Make that one death. One worker died as a result of the the crane he was working in becoming unbalanced and falling over.