LOC10:52
07:52 GMT
(With Photo)
TOKYO, April 12 (KUNA) -- Japan's nuclear safety agency on Tuesday raised
the crisis level at the nation's disaster-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear
power plant to the worst on the global scale of atomic accidents, the same
level as the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe.
The government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said it has upgraded
the severity level of the accident at the Fukushima plant from the current 5
to the highest level of 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale.
The previous evaluation of 5 was the same level as the 1979 partial reactor
meltdown at Three Mile Island in the US. The decision was made based on the
condition of the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 reactors at the Fukushima plant, which
was hit by a magnitude 9.0 quake and 15-meter tsunami on March 11, the agency
said.
The level 7 defined as a "major release of radioactive material with
widespread health and environmental effects requiring implementation of
planned and extended countermeasures," according the International Nuclear
Event Scale.
But the agency stressed that Fukushima was less serious than Chernobyl,
pointing out that the amount of radiation leaking from the Fukushima plant is
estimated to be about 10 percent of the Chernobyl accident.
In Chernobyl, 29 people died of acute radiation exposure, but there are no
fatal radiation casualties in the Fukushima case," senior agency official
Hidehiko Nishiyama told a press conference.
"At Chernobyl, a nuclear reactor itself exploded. But at Fukushima, only
buildings housing reactors were damaged by explosions, and the reactors
themselves retain their shape," Nishiyama also said.
However, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) said at a separate
news conference that radiation leakage at the plant could eventually exceed
that of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. "The radiation leak has not stopped
completely. If the leaks continue, the total radiation from the reactors may
eventually exceed that of Chernobyl," a TEPCO spokesman said.
The utility is still struggling to restore the reactors' cooling functions
at the plant located 230 km north of Tokyo, which are crucial to put the
ongoing radiation crisis under the control. It discovered a small fire near a
reactor building Tuesday morning. The fire was extinguished seven minutes
later. (end)
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