Japan Crisis Level just up graded to Level 6

Japan Crisis Level just up graded to Level 6

Accident at #Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant upgraded to level six crisis, on scale of seven, say French officials

This just came across Twitter from BBC news

7 – Major Accident
6 – Serious Accident
5 – Accident With Wider Consequences
4 – Accident With Local Consequences
3 – Serious Incident
2 – Incident
1 – Anomaly
0 – Deviation (No Safety Significance)

Ok, it just got worse.
It was a level 4 crisis but now they're saying it's a level 6
My conjecture is that Radiation levels must be rising significantly in Tokyo for this upgrade to occur.


(visit the link for the full news article)

seriously. what level was chernobyl? please don't say "5".

Level 7: Major accidentImpact on People and Environment
Major release of radio­active ­material with widespread health and environmental effects r­equiring implementation of planned and extended ­countermeasures
Chernobyl disaster, 26 April 1986. A power surge during a test procedure resulted in a criticality accident, leading to a powerful steam explosion and fire that released a significant fraction of core material into the environment, resulting in a death toll of 56 as well as estimated 4,000 additional cancer fatalities among people exposed to elevated doses of radiation. As a result, the city of Chernobyl (pop. 14,000) was largely abandoned, and the larger city of Prypiat (pop. 49,400) was completely abandoned. The disaster also brought about the creation of the so-called Zone of Alienation. The Chernobyl disaster is the only Level 7 Event that has ever occurred.

Level 6: Serious accidentImpact on People and Environment
Significant release of radioactive material likely to require implementation of planned countermeasures.
Example

Kyshtym disaster at Mayak, Soviet Union, 29 September 1957. A failed cooling system at a military nuclear waste reprocessing facility caused a steam explosion that released 70–80 tons of highly radioactive material into the environment. Impact on local population is not fully known.[2]

reply to post by fltcui

(visit the link for the full news article)

When you put a link in I will...

reply to post by themysterymachine


Chernobyl was a Level 7

Was watching the NHK & other news channels this morning and a very nervous looking sweaty spokesperson said it was level six then. Was at about 2.30 am GMT before I went to bed for some fitful sleep. So you've had a good 7 hours at this level already unfortunately.

reply to post by fltcui




I'm not sure I believe it but I read that the recommended action at level seven is to bend over, firmly grasp ankles and start crying.

Cernobyl was just one reactor, here we have multimple reactors, why do I get the feeling this will be bigger than Cernobyl.

www.bbc.co.uk...


whew.

Given what these people experienced...or have heard about from their parents or grandparents...at the end of WWII, the people must be genuinely terrified about exposure to radiation.

I understand that current weather patterns will be blowing the radiation toward Tokyo right now...a city with nearly 38 million people in and around it.

This sequence of events...giant earthquake...mammoth tsunami...nuclear disaster...is like the plot of a bad 1970's disaster movie. Who could believe it would really happen this way?

My prayers are with the people of Japan.

Originally posted by trailertrash
reply to post by fltcui

 

I'm not sure I believe it but I read that the recommended action at level seven is to bend over, firmly grasp ankles and start crying.

edit on 15-3-2011 by trailertrash because: (no reason given)

Sounds about right.

And given the official policy of downplaying catastrophic scenarios in order to avoid panic, we could quite possibly be looking at an 8 here. Wonder what the recommended response is for that?

reply to post by pepsi78


It has the potential to be bigger, and dirtier because of the MOX fuel used in reactor (3?)

For it to be a 'Chernobyl' event, we need a full meltdown of at least 1 reactor, then severe fires or explosions to push that material up into the wind currents to create fall out.

We can have a meltdown without the fires and explosions but it's not likely, they are having difficulty keeping the fuelrods cool, if they can't cool them sufficiently and they become exposed to the air, they can ignite and cause further explosions, ones that would spread radiation around like confetti.

Chernobyl was a Level 7

If the worst case scenario plays out in Japan they might have to create a Level 8.

reply to post by mobiusmale

a city with nearly 38 million people in and around it.

That's a mind blowing number..
We have around 22 million in the whole of Australia.

As soon as one of the reactors gets completely out of control and they have to abandon the entire facility.. it will be even worse.

I honestly expect this to happen with the next 12-24 hours.

They already stated this morning that 1 and 3 are doing better but 2 is worrying them.. if 2 gets worse they will lose control of 1 and 3 all over again.

as the boosh say, "CALMA LLAMA DOWN".



France's ASN nuclear safety authority said the accident could be classified as a level 5 or 6 on the international scale of 1 to 7, putting it on a par with the 1979 U.S. Three Mile Island meltdown, higher than the Japanese authorities' rating.
Japan's nuclear safety agency has rated the incidents in the No. 1 and No. 3 reactors as a 4, but has not yet rated the No. 2 reactor.


granted, its still worrying, but somehow i don't know if blowing up one dude's official opinion is gonna help us without further corroboration. there have been so many statements made about stuff that i would rather hear from someone who is actually there, not some pontificating frenchie. (don't get me wrong, i love the french but.....)

Originally posted by pepsi78
Cernobyl was just one reactor, here we have multimple reactors, why do I get the feeling this will be bigger than Cernobyl.

It's human nature to think the worst.
That's why most governments often play down situations so as to counter this and stop panic.
Unfortunately that usually means being accused of withholding information maliciously.

Everyones main concern should be for the country of Japan at this moment in time. The radiation danger is going to be a very serious issue for them, more so than it could eventually be for the rest of the world.
We'll have a percentage increase of cancers in surrounding areas, perhaps. The Japanese will likely lose an area of their already small country to this event for decades and those near the sites will quite probably suffer immediate health concerns.

This whole past few days is going to impact them considerably and the effects on the already near-collapsing global financial situation is going to be more dangerous to the rest of the world than the risk of fallout from this, a horrendous nuclear catastrophe in anyones book.

Originally posted by themysterymachine

putting it on a par with the 1979 U.S. Three Mile Island meltdown

granted, its still worrying, but somehow i don't know if blowing up one dude's official opinion

Um, i sincerely think you have not the faintest idea what is happening. It's already as bad as the second worst ever, but we don't know how bad that is because they lied so much over the 3mile island incident. Ditto for chernobyl.

Your BBC story didn't deny anything other than an sms. The story itself is valid.

If 1 reactor goes, the other 2, PLUS cooling ponds will go, in an almost instantaneous explosion, that would probably remove japan from the map.

You know the tsunami in japan? It'll be a like a kids swimming pool to the one headed to california.

I'm not a panicky sort of guy, and i'm in the southern hemisphere, but even any of you north america guys want to panic over anything, here's the time, while you still can.

So if the French agency days ago raised the event to a Level 6 and it did, and today the Japanese agency raised the event to a level 5 and it did, does that mean the French agency's level goes up one more as well - to a 7?

Just curious which rating to trust more. The Japanese or the French...