Chernobyl Status

The nuclear plant at Chernobyl pictured left and the battered

Fukashima Daiichi plant in Japan are now reported to both be

level 7 nuclear disasters.

     When the Fuakshima Daiichi reactor first fell victim to the ravages of the tsunami that has crippled Japan, Tokyo Electric and the Japanese government maintained that the fallout from the nuclear disaster facing the country would be contained and not reach the level 7 status of the disaster in Ukraine in 1986. However, their tune has changed significantly this week as new assessments of the levels of nuclear contaminents released both by radioactive water and the multiple explosions that occured at several of the reactors at the plant have reached the levels of Chernobyl.

     Japanese officilas have stated that although the disaster in Japan has reached a level 7 on the international nuclear crisis scale, the level of radioactivity released is only about a tenth of that put into the atmosphere after the Chernobyl meltdown. However, the level was first reported at 5, putting it on par with the accident occurred at Three Mile Island and now the officials are stating that initially the accident at Fukashima Daiichi was in fact a 7 and now has been downgraded to a 5.

     This is just part of a perplexing string of events that has been unfolding since the tsunami struck March 11, leaving the Japanese government to look either uninformed about the actions taking place at the plant or trying to conceal the facts. Seiji Shiroya, a commissioner of Japan's Nuclear Safety Committee said that the intial decision to not label it a level 7 disaster was due to the fear that the statistics at the time may have had too large of a margin of error to make such a drastic decision. However, he also hinted at a more plausable agenda:

“Some foreigners fled the country even when there appeared to be little risk,” he said. “If we immediately decided to label the situation as Level 7, we could have triggered a panicked reaction.”

Shiroya later went on to say:

  “At first, the calculations could have been off by digits,” Mr. Shiroya said. “It was only when there was certainty that the margin of error was within two to three times that we made an announcement,” he said, later adding, “I do not think that there was any delay.”

     Scientists and coutnries abroad have been critical of the Japanese for their handling of the situation since the disaster began to unfold in mid March. Even though Japanese officials are stating that they errored on the side of caution in waiting to upgrade the level of the disaster, wouldn't you do so to protect lives rather than prevent a mass exodus? This logic underscores the differences in culture from Amercia to Japan. Japan, being a more collectivist culture is more about the whole rather than the individual, so, in that line of reasoning it might be persmissable to sacrifice a few to save the majority from harm.

     With that being said, many peole involved in the energy business have been hearing whispers that the numbers the Japanese had been disclosing to the pubic were not at all accurate. A senior executive said in a telephone interview on April 4 that he had been told that the Speedi model suggested that radioactive materials escaping the Daiichi complex were much higher than Japanese officials had publicly acknowledged, and perhaps as high as half of the releases from Chernobyl. -The New York Times


    
     Because the numbers on Chernobyl are skewed, mostly because experts believe the Russians also weren't forthcoming with the level of radioactive releases from their plant, the comparison between Japan and Chernobyl are fuzzy at best. The Japanese calculations proposing that the damage is only about 20% of the Chernobyl accident are based on the assumption that the reported statistics from the 1986 disaster were underreported by about 2 times what they actually were. If the Chernobyl accident was found to be more credible than believed, the Japanese disaster would then be raised to about 40-50 % of that in the Ukraine.

     A major fact that is being overlooked in the grand scheme of tyring to assess the level of damage is that Chernobyl only lasted for about 10 days while the ongoing drama in Japan has continued for well over a month with no end in sight. The question that should be on everyone's mind is that even if Japan surpassed the Chernobyl accident would the Japanese government and Tepco let us know?