Japan is raising the official seriousness of this Fukushima nuclear mess from 5 or 6 to a new 6 or 7. Tell us something we don’t know. This is where the rest of the world gets all excited again, but where I lose interest. It has no bearing on the actual amount of radiation I’m getting, somewhat south of Tokyo.
Here’s what I find interesting. There must have been a mighty debate about foot-dragging and stonewalling with regard to public disclosures of the severity of this disaster. Early on, it was clear that this was worse than the perennially lying TEPCO and Government of Japan were letting on. Somebody inside the system must have been trying to ring the bells for us. Right? Right? Not all at once now.
Even so, I do not see this as a Chernobyl-level event. I am satisfied that number three did not in fact blow containment sky high and blanket half the globe in a lingering spall of death dust. Which is what Chernobyl did. There are serious, deadly, largely uncontrollable problems. But this is not Chernobyl, no matter what somebody’s vaguely-worded official measure of bad-ness is:
“Major release of radioactive material with widespread health and environmental effects requiring implementation of planned and extended countermeasures”.
So while it sounds like there is something quantifiable which makes this as bad as Chernobyl, there in fact is not. Some articles cite a news release in which a quantity of becquerels released are driving the upgrade of this incident, but that is not a direct correlation. Fukushima is bad, but it is still a fart in a windstorm compared to Chernobyl. What they have in common is that the descriptive text quoted above can be applied to both, and that’s about it.
