The situation, despite sensational reports, is nowhere near as bad as Chernobyl. It is physically impossible for it to turn out like Chernobyl, considering that the Soviet Union skimped on widely known best practices to save a few rubles and elected to make reactors with positive void coefficients. Japan, Germany and every other developed and semi-developed nation has avoided this. This, at worst, will be a moderate scenario of the kind which occurred at Three Mile Island in 1979.

Also, radiation -- The Incredible Hulk notwithstanding -- isn't nearly as scary as people think. Rather than report on the actual milirad readings of the area or the environmental and biological half-lifes of the isotopes involved, the corporate media has decided to make alarmist statements about "RADIATION A THOUSAND TIMES HIGHER THAN NORMAL!!" Sounds scary, right? That's the intent.

However, the amount of radiation you'd get is the same amount of radiation you'd get after eating one and a half bananas or a brazil nut. On the other hand, OMG ATOMZ! HIROSHIMA CHERNOBYL NAGASAKI. I really hope this doesn't provide fuel [no pun intended] for anti-nuclear radicals. As someone who cares about the environment, I am of course concerned with the long-term issues of nuclear waste disposal. I donate to Greenpeace, but I have to break with them on the issue of nuclear power. At this point we must quickly eliminate coal-powered plants and other carbon-emitting forms of energy, and wind, hydroelectric and solar power are just not feasible at this point.
 
Also, "meltdown" is almost never used by actual nuclear engineers or physicists because it's such a vague term which can refer to many things, from serious life-threatening circumstances to a complete non-issue. Japan's situation is halfway in between.