(Source)
http://nuclear-news.net/2013/08/21/japan-to-upgrade-fukushima-nuclear-warning-level-france-24/
…The leak,
which has not been plugged, is so contaminated that a person standing
50 cm (1.6 feet) away would, within an hour, receive a radiation dose
five times the average annual global limit for nuclear workers.
After 10 hours,
a worker in that proximity to the leak would develop radiation
sickness with symptoms including nausea and a drop in white blood
cells….
Japan’s
nuclear watchdog is looking to upgrade the warning level over a toxic
leak at the Fukushima nuclear plant, it was announced Wednesday. The
action will be the most serious step taken since the plant the
earthquake and tsunami in 2011.
By FRANCE
24 (video)
News
Wires (text)
Japan
will dramatically raise its warning about the severity of
a toxic water leak at the Fukushima
nuclear plant, its nuclear watchdog said on Wednesday, its most
serious action since the plant was destroyed by an
earthquake and tsunami in 2011.
The deepening
crisis at the Fukushima plant will be upgraded from a level 1
“anomaly” to a level three “serious incident” on an
international scale for radiological releases, a spokesman for
Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) said.
That will mark
the first time Japan has issued a warning on the International
Nuclear Event Scale (INES) since three reactor meltdowns after the
massive quake in March 2011.
Water still
leaking from the plant is so contaminated that a person standing
close to it for an hour would receive five times the annual
recommended limit for nuclear workers in a year.
A maximum level
7 was declared at the battered plant after explosions led to a loss
of power and cooling two years ago, confirming Fukushima as the worst
nuclear accident since Chernobyl a quarter of a century earlier.
Contaminated
water with dangerously high levels of radiation is leaking from a
storage tank at Fukushima, the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric
Power Co said on Tuesday. The leak was classified as an “anomaly”
earlier this week.
The NRA’s
impending assessment upgrade came in a document posted on the
agency’s website on Wednesday, with formal adoption to follow a
meeting that is being held by the authority’s commissioners, the
NRA spokesman said by telephone.
“Judging from
the amount and the density of the radiation in the contaminated water
that leaked … a level 3 assessment is appropriate,” the document
said.
The leak, which
has not been plugged, is so contaminated that a person standing 50 cm
(1.6 feet) away would, within an hour, receive a radiation dose five
times the average annual global limit for nuclear workers.
After 10 hours,
a worker in that proximity to the leak would develop radiation
sickness with symptoms including nausea and a drop in white blood
cells.
Each one-step
INES increase represents a tenfold increase in severity, according to
a factsheet on the website of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
(REUTERS)
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