yellow dust in germany

One correction to your statement above about Chernobyl. Chernobyl was not over in 10 days. All the fires were finally out on May 10th (including the reactor #4 fire). 14 days after the explosion. The heat and smoke from that fire sent a massive amount of contamination into the atmosphere. And after the fires were out, radiation was still being emitted from the damaged plant as there was no containment whatsoever. So, any winds blowing through the area were still picking up particles from the plant and distributing them. This is why the Soviet "liquidators" sprayed the sticky stuff all over the area to keep the dust down. The sarcophagus built to seal off the reactor wasn't completed until December 1986. So, Chernobyl was effectively an radioactive open sore for at least 7 months.
One look at the pictures of reactor #4 after the explosion will make the "open sore" analogy very clear.

By contrast, while we've seen explosions at the Fukushima plant, they were small in comparison to Chernobyl. And there has not been two weeks of fire. And there is at least *some* containment. The ongoing contamination from Fukushima is from whatever blows through the plant and any water leaking onto/into the ground and ocean. This is similar to the condition Chernobyl was in (minus the ocean contaminatio) after the fires were out. Although, I don't believe the area contamination (source of dust) is nearly as extensive. I therefore also don't believe the ongoing contamination is as extensive either.

Please don't get me wrong. There's no doubt that Fukushima is a ***disaster***. And I'm not trying to minimize it or its impact on the environment. However, the scale of Chernobyl needs to be understood and not minimized either. It is THE example of a worst case scenario. And we need to keep that in mind when comparing the two disasters.