Official: Japan's nuclear situation nearing severity of Chernobyl
 

The explosion Tuesday at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has elevated the situation there to a "serious accident" on a level just below Chernobyl, a French nuclear official said, referring to an international scale that rates the severity of such incidents.

The International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale -- or INES -- goes from Level 1, which indicates very little danger to the general population, to Level 7, a "major accident" in which there's been a large release of radioactive material and there will be widespread health and environmental effects.

"It's clear we are at Level 6, that's to say we're at a level in between what happened at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl," Andre-Claude Lacoste, president of France's nuclear safety authority, told reporters Tuesday.

And yet, the news in Japan are more optimistic.

A friend that lives in Tokyo told me that both CNN and BBC are exaggerating. A footage presenting a dad meeting his lost children, crying and hugging them, was presented on BBC with the comment "people are desperate, they cry and can't get a hold of themselves'...

I don't care. they are so far from UK.

please post sources

lots of conflicting news reports

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12749444

bbc site says its getting better.

The first quote is from CNN.

please post legitimate news sources.

:)

First time when I agree with you :)

i wasn't aware we were at odds with our views or personalities. :-)

Just overheard on cnn that it has gone to LEVEL 6

This will surpass Chernobyl before it's over. :2 cents:

it is just life ...

my guess is that nothing like Chernobyl will happen...

of course not, now we have three reactors in the game ... :winkwink:

All 6 of them are compromised.

there are several technical reasons why it will (probably) not as big as Chernobyl. but even if only 5,000 instead of 200,000 die of cancer nuclear power still sucks in general

Chernobyl happened because of operator error, not natural disaster. So no matter what transpires, Chernobyl will be "worse" because it could have been entirely prevented. The outcome of the Japanese Nuclear incident might end up being more traumatic though.

Couldn't we also say that the piss poor design of the Mark 1 Fukushima Dai-ichi plant is a "human error" as well? If it didn't have such glaring flaws, perhaps the natural disaster portion of this would have been a moot point and there wouldn't be an emergency in the first place.

i'm pretty impressed with how the reactors handled the disasters. i believe they were engineered to handle a 7.9-8.0. all redundant systems worked, etc. although that is the view of many experts not mine, i simply embrace that view.

ummmm, no. they all failed.

as i mentioned, this is not my view, i simply have embraced it.

you can point that out to the many experts who think otherwise though, here is one you can contact directly to correct him

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03...iima_analysis/

More like Lots of antinuke activists trying to stir the pot. Here's a new way to handle this situation: look at the facts.

It seems like they would make a GIANT containment dome surrounding all reactors during the design phase of these things. Just sayin...

...and airplanes should have giant parachutes built into the tail section, but they don't.

Million dollar idea

:thumbsup:thumbsup:thumbsup:smokin:smokin

this is bad

Sure could, but bottom line is that nothing natural caused the Chernobyl "accident."

They were testing the safety systems at Chernobyl and were trying to make it safer in light of knowing they didn't have the proper systems in place - their experiment failed and snowballed into the clusterfuck it became.

I don't know much about the Nuclear Plant in Japan but if they weren't prepared for an earthquake... they should have been. It's stupid to spend that much money on making power, knowing that if something happens it's going to completely ruin the area for 25+ years... and not putting the correct safety procedures or equipment in place regardless of the cost. It's not like they're working with gas or water... they're working with fuel that will stay 'burning' for 50+ years.

Japan is fucked. They will have a ghost town, that is for sure.
And radiation fallout will be noticable all over the world.