Monday, April 11, 2011

Japan Lifts Nuclear Alert to Chernobyl Level

It's official. Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency has raised the Fukushima Daiichii nuclear accident ranking to 7 the highest possiblr, a spokesman said at a news conference in Tokyo today.

The International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale rates nuclear accidents in terms of their effects on health and the environment, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which helped set up the system. Each of its seven steps represents a ten times increase in the severity of the incident or accident, according to the INES factsheet.


Level 7 means there has been a “major release of radioactive material with widespread health and environmental effects requiring implementation of planned and extended countermeasures,” the factsheet says.

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