Japan Raises Nuclear Plant Crisis Severity To 7

darkonc writes "Early Tuesday in Japan, the government decided to raise the severity level of the accident to the maximum 7 on an international scale, up from the current 5 and matching that of the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe. The government declared the level 7 emergency because it is now estimated that the crippled plant was emitting over 10,000 terabecquerels of radioactivity for a number of hours at the height of the nuclear incident. Previously, on Monday, the government had expanded the evacuation zone around the plant to include at least 6 cities up to 60 km away from the plant. These cities, outside of the current 20-30 km evacuation area, are now expected to exceed the 20 millisieverts/year limit on residual radiation established by International Commission on Radiological Protection and the International Atomic Energy Agency in the case of an emergency."

Comments

Re:And some people still wonder why...

[shic]

I am broadly in favour of nuclear energy - in principle. In practice, I have faith in neither corporate compliance nor government monitoring. Neither entity is equipped, or motivated, to appropriately manage long term risk... and that means you can good as guarantee failures. Hysteria about nuclear contamination, IMHO, has made matters worse - encouraging officials to focus exclusively upon reassuring the public that there is "no risk" at the expense of a focus on restricting and mitigating the consequences of the (ultimately inevitable) eventual accident.

Re:why are it the bulk of slashdot comments

[Joce640k]

... you don't understand risk analysis

Are the anti-nuclear crowd going to drive their cars to the protest? After letting the TSA spend billions of dollars to trample their rights on the flight over there? And receiving a decent dose of radiation on that flight.

Tell me again about "risk analysis" and how good the average person is at it...

it's not hysteria going on here. really

Uhuh.