After a third blast at nuclear reactor #3 at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan and a fire at a fourth reactor, several U.S. experts have described the nuclear emergency unfolding in Japan as “catastrophic”. There is great concern that the containment vessel at reactor #2 has been breached, causing the release of radioactive gases and similarly, there is anxiety that reactor #4 could be just as dangerous.
Where 1,400 once worked, a dedicated few–50 brave workers–remain at the nuclear facility, trying to keep water pumping into the multiple reactors and perhaps risking their lives for the greater good.
Initially, residents within a two-mile radius of the facility had been evacuated but this has now expanded. There are reports too that radiation levels near Tokyo are nearly 10 times above normal.
Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan described the unfolding disaster as the worst since World War II and admitted that the risk of further leaking of radioactive material exists. He called for evacuations within a 20 mile radius of the nuclear facility. He urged residents to take precautions, keeping windows and doors closed.
U.S. experts warn that, because of the clustering of reactors, trouble at one could set off an avalanche of challenges at several others, a scene which is currently playing out. They note that it is the worst nuclear accident that any country has faced since Chernobyl, which occurred in 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plan in the Ukraine.
The Chernobyl disaster has been classified as the worst nuclear accident in history and the only one classified as a level 7 event on the International Nuclear Event Scale.
Some experts have described the current nuclear disaster in Japan as a level 5–which is still far from over.
