The Japan would have to the nuclear crisis of rates to the highest level - Washington Post

TOKYO - Japanese authorities provide Tuesday raise their rating of the severity of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear crisis to the highest level, equal to that of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, the Kyodo News Agency.

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Officials reclassified the urgency in level 5, "accident with off-site risk", level 7, a "major accident". The new assessment comes at a time when the International Atomic Energy Agency says the plant is showing "early signs of recovery" but still in critical condition.

Weakened reactors the constant threat of strong aftershocks and later on Tuesday morning - a magnitude 6.4 temblor - caused a brief fire at a water sampling facility near reactor No. 4 of Daiichi. The Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the facility, said that the critical process used to cool the hot fuel rods had not been interrupted, and radiation levels showed no signs of change.

An accident of level 7, function of the International nuclear and radiological event scale, characterized by a "major release of radioactive material with widespread health and environmental effects.

Previously, only Chernobyl had been given a rating of 7. The nuclear accident at Three Mile Island 1979 in Pennsylvania was assessed at level 5 incident.

Fukushima Daiichi contamination still does not match that of the Chernobyl accident, but it has already prompted the evacuation of tens of thousands of people who live in 19 miles of the plant. The Japanese Government had initially called for a mandatory evacuation in a radius of 12 miles. But the Monday Japan has expanded its evacuation zone, selection of cities in 19 miles - those with readings of radiation higher - for the mandatory evacuation.

According to the nuclear safety of the Japan Commission, Kyodo reported Monday that the plant, at a time after the March 11 earthquake and the tsunami, had been releasing 10,000 terabecquerels of radioactivity per hour. The report does not specify when these readings of radiation occurred. One out of tens of thousands of terabecquerels at the time, however, corresponding with the level of radiation leak that IAEA uses as a point of minimum benchmarks for an accident of level 7.

"This is a significant fraction of the inventory of base of a power reactor, typically involving a mixture of radionuclides in short and long life", says a document of the IAEA. "With such version, stochastic health over a large area, maybe involving more than one country should be."

harlanc@washpost.com

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