Japan Raises Nuke Crisis Severity to Match Chernobyl
Japan raised the severity level of the crisis at its crippled nuclear plant Tuesday to rank it on par with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, citing cumulative radiation leaks that have contaminated the air, tap water, vegetables and seawater.
Japanese nuclear regulators said the rating was being raised from 5 to 7 — the highest level on an international scale overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency — after new assessments of radiation leaks from the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant since it was disabled by the March 11 tsunami.
The new ranking signifies a "major accident" that includes widespread effects on the environment and health, according to the Vienna-based IAEA.
While Japanese officials have played down any health effects so far, the revision came a day after the government added five communities to a list of places people should leave to avoid long-term radiation exposure. A 12-mile (20-kilometer) radius already had been cleared around the plant.
Japanese officials have said the leaks from the Fukushima plant so far amount to a tenth of the radiation emitted in the Chernobyl disaster, while acknowledging they eventually could exceed Chernobyl's emissions if the crisis continues.
"This reconfirms that this is an extremely major disaster. We are very sorry to the public, people living near the nuclear complex and the international community for causing such a serious accident," said Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano.
But Edano told reporters there was no "direct health damage" so far from the crisis. "The accident itself is really serious, but we have set our priority so as not to cause health damage."
Hironobu Unesaki, a nuclear physicist at Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute, said the revision was not a cause for worry, that it had to do with the overall release of radiation and was not directly linked to health dangers. He said most of the radiation was released early in the crisis and that the reactors still have mostly intact containment vessels surrounding their nuclear cores.
The change was "not directly connected to the environmental and health effects," Unesaki said. "Judging from all the measurement data, it is quite under control. It doesn't mean that a significant amount of release is now continuing."
Continued aftershocks following the 9.0-magnitude megaquake on March 11 have impeded work in stabilizing the Fukushima plant — the latest a 6.3-magnitude one Tuesday that prompted plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co., or TEPCO, to temporarily pull back workers.
Officials from Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said that the cumulative amount of radioactive particles released into the atmosphere since the incident had reached levels that apply to a Level 7 incident. Other factors included damage to the plant's buildings and accumulated radiation levels for its workers.
The revision was based on cross-checking and assessments of data on leaks of radioactive iodine-131 and cesium-137, NISA spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama said.
"We have refrained from making announcements until we have reliable data," Nishiyama said. "The announcement is being made now because it became possible to look at and check the accumulated data assessed in two different ways," he said, referring to measurements from NISA and Japan's Nuclear Security Council.
Nishiyama noted that unlike in Chernobyl there have been no explosions of reactor cores at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, although there were hydrogen explosions.
"In that sense, this situation is totally different from Chernobyl," he said.
NISA and the NSC have been measuring emissions of radioactive iodine-131 and cesium-137, a heavier element with a much longer half-life. Based on an average of their estimates and a formula that converts elements into a common radioactive measure, the equivalent of about 500,000 terabecquerels of radiation from iodine-131 has been released into the atmosphere since the crisis began.
That well exceeds the Level 7 threshold of the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale of "several tens of thousands of terabecquerels" of iodine-131. A terabecquerel equals a trillion becquerels, a measure for radiation emissions.
The government says the Chernobyl incident released 5.2 million terabecquerels into the air — about 10 times that of the Fukushima plant.
However, an official from TEPCO, Takashi Kurita, acknowledged that, if leaks continue, the amount of radioactivity released might eventually exceed the amount emitted by Chernobyl.
The company, under fire for its handling of the accident and its disaster preparedness before the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, issued yet another apology Tuesday.
"We humbly accept this. We deeply apologize for causing tremendous trouble to those who live near the nuclear complex and people in the prefecture," TEPCO spokesman Naoki Tsunoda said.
In Chernobyl, in the Ukraine, a reactor exploded on April 26, 1986, spewing a cloud of radiation over much of the Northern Hemisphere. A zone about 19 miles (30 kilometers) around the plant was declared uninhabitable, although some plant workers still live there for short periods and a few hundred other people have returned despite government encouragement to stay away.
Source: Associated Press
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