Japan Lifts Atomic Alert to Highest Level, Matching Chernobyl

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Japan Lifts Atomic Alert to Highest Level, Matching Chernobyl


Japan raised the severity rating of its nuclear crisis to the highest, matching the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, as increasing radiation prompts the government to widen the evacuation zone and aftershocks rocked the country.
Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency raised the rating to 7, a spokesman said at a news conference in Tokyo today. The accident at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi station was previously rated 5 on the global scale, the same as the 1979 partial reactor meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania.
The stricken nuclear plant, located about 220 kilometers (135 miles) north of Tokyo, is leaking radiation in Japan’s worst civilian nuclear disaster after a magnitude-9 quake and tsunami on March 11.
The government “is at last beginning to wake up to the reality of the scale of the disaster,” said Philip White, International Liaison Officer at the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center, a Tokyo-based group opposed to atomic energy. “Its belated move to evacuate people from a larger area around the nuclear plant, likewise, is a recognition that the impact on public health is potentially much greater than it first acknowledged."

 

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more than 400 quakes with magnitude 6.0 or higher since initial quake in Japan:

Tokyo (CNN) -- A fresh round of tremors, including one with a magnitude of 6.3, shook northern Japan on Tuesday afternoon, the Japan Meteorological Agency reported.
The quake was centered in Fukushima Prefecture, near Japan's Pacific coast and about 64 kilometers (40 miles) southwest of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Workers retreated to earthquake-resistant shelters during the event, but there was no loss of power at the plant, the Tokyo Electric Power Company told CNN.

It followed a magnitude-6.4 quake Tuesday morning that killed at least six people when it triggered a landslide in Iwaki, north of Tokyo.

The earlier quake buried three homes, the Iwaki fire department said. Three people were rescued and hospitalized, and fire officials were working to rescue an unknown number of others believed to be trapped, the department said.

The quake struck at about 8:08 a.m. Tuesday (7:08 p.m. Monday ET), according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It had a depth of about 13 kilometers (8 miles) and was centered about 77 miles east-southeast of Tokyo.

Monday night, one person was killed in Iwaki and several others were trapped when a powerful 6.6-magnitude earthquake triggered landslides there, the fire department said. It happened exactly one month after the country's devastating 9.0-magnitude quake and tsunami.
Since the March 11 disaster, there have been more than 400 aftershocks of magnitude 6.0 or greater, according to Japan's Meteorological Agency, and more than 27,700 people are dead or missing, national police said Tuesday.

The earlier quake was centered about 100 miles (164 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo and about 30 miles (50 kilometers) southwest of the nuclear facility, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The landslides in Iwaki buried three houses. Police in Fukushima Prefecture initially reported that four people were trapped. The Iwaki Fire Department later said more than four people were trapped, but the exact number was unclear.