Japan crisis exceeds Three Mile Island, expert says; no-fly zone declared - Mar 2011
SOMA, Japan ? The catastrophe at Japan's stricken nuclear complex is now worse than Three Mile Island, experts said Tuesday. An explosion overnight at Unit 4 at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant opened two large holes in the structure housing spent nuclear fuel rods in a large pool. Japanese officials told the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that the spent fuel storage area had caught fire and that radioactivity was "being released directly into the atmosphere."
The radiation releases prompted Japan to order 140,000 people to seal themselves indoors and a30-kilometer (19-mile) no-fly zone was imposed around the site Tuesday. Soon after the latest events, France's nuclear safety authority ASN said the disaster ranks as alevel 6 on the international scale of 1 to 7. Level 7 was used only once, for Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986. The 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania was rated a level 5.
"It is very clear that we are at a level 6," ASN President Andre-Claude Lacoste told a news conference in Paris. "We are clearly in a catastrophe." "This event is now closer to a level 6, and it may unfortunately reach a level 7," added David Albright, head of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, D.C.
LINK
"Everything is fine, nothing to see here, it is all under control. We are spraying it with a hose."
SOMA, Japan ? The catastrophe at Japan's stricken nuclear complex is now worse than Three Mile Island, experts said Tuesday. An explosion overnight at Unit 4 at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant opened two large holes in the structure housing spent nuclear fuel rods in a large pool. Japanese officials told the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that the spent fuel storage area had caught fire and that radioactivity was "being released directly into the atmosphere."
The radiation releases prompted Japan to order 140,000 people to seal themselves indoors and a30-kilometer (19-mile) no-fly zone was imposed around the site Tuesday. Soon after the latest events, France's nuclear safety authority ASN said the disaster ranks as alevel 6 on the international scale of 1 to 7. Level 7 was used only once, for Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986. The 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania was rated a level 5.
"It is very clear that we are at a level 6," ASN President Andre-Claude Lacoste told a news conference in Paris. "We are clearly in a catastrophe." "This event is now closer to a level 6, and it may unfortunately reach a level 7," added David Albright, head of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, D.C.
LINK
"Everything is fine, nothing to see here, it is all under control. We are spraying it with a hose."
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