Japan Raises Fukushima Crisis Level From 5 To 7, The Worst On The International Scale


(Watch the video here.)

The Japanese government’s nuclear safety agency has decided to raise the crisis level of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant accident from 5 to 7, the worst on the international scale.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency made the decision on Monday. It says the damaged facilities have been releasing a massive amount of radioactive substances, which are posing a threat to human health and the environment over a wide area.

The agency used the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, or INES, to gauge the level. The scale was designed by an international group of experts to indicate the significance of nuclear events with ratings of 0 to 7.

On March 18th, one week after the massive quake, the agency declared the Fukushima trouble a level 5 incident, the same as the accident at Three Mile Island in the United States in 1979.

Level 7 has formerly only been applied to the Chernobyl accident in the former Soviet Union in 1986 when hundreds of thousands of terabecquerels of radioactive iodine-131 were released into the air. One terabecquerel is one trillion becquerels.

The agency believes the cumulative amount from the Fukushima plant is less than that from Chernobyl. (Fukushima is much worse than Chernobyl and all regular Infinite Unknown readers know that.)

Officials from the agency and the Nuclear Safety Commission will hold a news conference on Tuesday morning to explain the change of evaluation.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011 05:47 +0900 (JST)

Source: NHK

1 thought on “Japan Raises Fukushima Crisis Level From 5 To 7, The Worst On The International Scale”

  1. AREVA the French nuclear plant company has released a paper on Fukishima. It appears that he entire contents of the core of Nuclear Reactor 4, which at the time of the earthquake were temporarily stored in the fuel pool (outside the containment structure), have melted down in “fresh air” and been released into the atmosphere, with “nearly no retention of fission products”, representing therefore a “large release”.

    These radioactive isotopes are now drifting around the entire northern hemisphere.

    The AREVA employee who made this presentation stated at the time that: “Clearly we’re witnessing one of the greatest disasters of modern time”.

    http://www.scribd.com/doc/52743735/AREVA-Fukushima
    http://fairewinds.com/content/closing-ranks-nrc-nuclear-industry-and-tepco-are-limiting-flow-information

    Reply

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