Japan has raised its assessment of the nuclear crisis on its Fukushima Daiichi plant from 5 to 7, the most severe rating on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES).
The rise in severity now puts Japan’s nuclear crisis in the same company as the 1986 accident at Chernobyl, the only other incident warranting a seven on the INES.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, a ranking of 7 signifies that a “major accident with widespread health and environmental effects and the external release of a significant fraction of the reactor core inventory.”
Japanese officials are downplaying the severity saying that the health and environmental damage caused by Chernobyl still “far out weighs” that of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
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