Just saw this on NHK World, which confuse me. They are saying the level of radiation around Fukushima has no health concern, and that traces of radiation from around the world is still MUCH lower than that of Chernobyl. That said, they are saying that this incident was worse than Three Mile, if thats the case, why was Three Mile such a big deal then????
NHK WORLD English
UN expert: Fukushima worse than Three Mile Island
A senior UN scientific official says the ongoing problems at the Fukushima nuclear plant are much more serious than the Three Mile Island case in the US in 1979.
The chairman of the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, Wolfgang Weiss, spoke at a news conference in Vienna on Wednesday.
He said the Fukushima case is less serious than the accident at the Chernobyl plant in the former Soviet Union in 1986.
Weiss said his organization has seen traces of iodine in the air all over the world but they are much lower than traces seen at similar distances after Chernobyl.
The Japanese government is rating the Fukushima accident a "level 5" on the international scale of 7 that measures nuclear accidents. The Three Mile Island is ranked a level 5 and Chernobyl a level 7.
But Weiss said although detected radiation levels around the Fukushima plant are higher than normal, they are not expected to have major impact on people's health.
The UN committee is to send its experts to Japan to see the effects of radiation from the Fukushima plant, after consulting with the Japanese government.
Friday, April 08, 2011 06:15 +0900 (JST)