Originally Posted by StariaDaniel

I don't know where your wife's mum got the information, but on some reliable german news sites (Spiegel.de, Welt.de, Zeit.de, ...) they're reporting 3 reactors on 2 different locations in trouble.

At the moment they also report that they're not certain what exactly happened and if they can get it under control. So worst-case chernobyl-like desaster COULD be possible, but it could also be possible that they regain control, fix the cooling issues and only a little amount of radioactivity gets out.

By the way, allthough only a few thousand died directly in Chernobyl - but there are tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) who got cancer / died of cancer as a long term result of Chernobyl ...