Earthquake (5)

Are we a 5 or a 7? A City University of New York expert says neither one is exactly right.


"It's incorrect to say that it's on the same level as Chernobyl," Japanese-American physicist Michio Kaku, a professor at the City University of New York, told the Daily News.

"Chernobyl represents the high end of the category. Right now Fukushima would be more on the low end - about one-tenth the level of Chernobyl."

Japanese officials raised Fukushima's rating to the highest level on the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) accident severity index Tuesday - sending shock waves through surrounding villages and the international media.

Regulators stressed it didn't represent a worsening of the situation at the tsunami-crippled nuclear plant, just a reassessment of overall radiation leaks since the March 11 earthquake."


Nothing is as serious as the Chernobyl disaster was. Perhaps it simply means the rating scale is off, and if the rating scale is off, maybe a lot of our thinking about nuclear affairs is off the mark, too.

Earth to humans: wake up! wake up!



Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2011/04/12/2011-04-12_japan_is_no_chernobyl_physicist_says_threat_level_upgrade_is_wakeup_call_but_not.html#ixzz1JOGns1oP