Japan raises nuclear crisis to same level as Chernobyl

Japan raises nuclear crisis to same level as Chernobyl


(Reuters) - Japan raised the severity of its nuclear crisis to the highest level on Tuesday, putting it on a par with the world's worst nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in 1986 because of the amount of radiation released into the air and sea.

As another major aftershock rattled the earthquake-ravaged east of the country, a fire broke out at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, although engineers later appeared to have extinguished the blaze.

Developments in recent days suggest the operator of the stricken facility is no closer to restoring cooling systems at the reactors, which is critical to bringing down the temperature of overheated nuclear fuel rods.

An official at Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) said that based on cumulative levels of radiation released, the severity of the incident had been raised to 7, the worst on an internationally recognised scale.

A senior official in Prime Minister Naoto Kan's office said the reason for raising the level to 7 a month after the disaster was that it had taken time to measure and estimate the overall radiation emitted from the damaged nuclear plant.

"Even before this, we had considered this a very serious incident so in that sense, there will be no big change in the way we deal with it just because it has been designated level 7," said the official.

It had previously been put at a 5 rating, on a par with the 1979 Three Mile Island incident in the United States.

A level 7 incident means a major release of radiation with a widespread health and environmental impact, while a 5 level is a limited release of radioactive material, with several deaths, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Several experts said the new rating exaggerated the severity of the crisis, adding the incident did not compare to the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine a quarter of a century ago which spewed radiation over most of Europe.

"It's nowhere near that level. Chernobyl was terrible -- it blew and they had no containment, and they were stuck," said nuclear industry specialist Murray Jennex, an associate professor at San Diego State University in California.

"Their (Japan's) containment has been holding, the only thing that hasn't is the fuel pool that caught fire."

The increase in the severity level heightens the risk of diplomatic tension with Japan's neighbours over radioactive fallout. China and South Korea have already been critical of the operator's decision to pump radioactive water into the sea, a process it has now stopped.

"Raising the level to a 7 has serious diplomatic implications. It is telling people that the accident has the potential to cause trouble to our neighbours," said Kenji Sumita, a nuclear expert at Osaka University.

The month-long nuclear crisis that has gripped Japan following an earthquake and tsunami has claimed up to 28,000 lives and the estimated cost stands at $300 billion (184 billion pounds), making it the world's most expensive disaster.

NISA said the amount of radiation released into the atmosphere from the plant, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, was around 10 percent that of Chernobyl.

source: reuters.com