"Biggest (nuclear) emergency since Chernobyl" seems hyperbolic unless the situation has changed considerably since I last looked at it. Indeed in Japan alone the Mihama Nuclear Power Plant accident in 2004 caused more fatalities than Fukushima has so far.
According to Wikipedia, the 2004 incident involved people being killed by a broken steam pipe. That's an emergency that happens to have been at a nuclear plant, not a nuclear emergency, and the regional effects were zero.
