Perilous
Times
Fukushima meltdown 'much bigger than Chernobyl', says
Russian nuclear Scientist
* From correspondents in Washington
* From: AFP
* April 02, 2011 6:46AM
JAPAN'S unfolding nuclear disaster is "much bigger than Chernobyl"
and could rewrite the international scale used to measure the
severity of atomic accidents, a Russian expert says.
"Chernobyl was a dirty bomb explosion. The next dirty bomb is
Fukushima and it will cost much more" in economic and human terms,
Natalia Mironova said.
Ms Mironova is thermodynamic engineer who became a leading
anti-nuclear activist in Russia in the wake of the accident at the
Soviet-built reactor in Ukraine in 1986.
"Fukushima is much bigger than Chernobyl," she said, adding that
the Japanese nuclear crisis was likely to eclipse Chernobyl on the
seven-point international scale used to rate nuclear disasters.
Chernobyl, which a 2005 report by UN bodies including the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) called "the most severe
in the history of the nuclear power industry", was ranked a seven
on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES).
But Japan's ongoing crisis, triggered by a massive earthquake and
tsunami three weeks ago which took down the main electricity and
back-up power supplies needed to power cooling systems at several
reactors at Fukushima, could be "even higher" on the INES scale,
she said.
"Chernobyl was level seven and it had only one reactor and lasted
only two weeks. We have now three weeks (at Fukushima) and we have
four reactors which we know are in very dangerous situations," she
said.
Japan's nuclear safety agency has maintained its rating of the
Fukushima accident at four, while a French watchdog has upgraded
it to six.
Chernobyl's death toll is hotly debated. UN agencies estimate up
to 9000 people could be expected to die as a direct consequence of
the accident, and the disaster will end up costing hundreds of
billions of dollars.
Environmental groups such as Greenpeace say up to 100,000 people
could die.
Ms Mironova is touring the United States with other Russian
anti-nuclear activists, including Tatiana Muchamedyarova and
Natalia Manzurova, who worked as a "liquidator", or emergency
clean-up and recovery worker, at Chernobyl.
Their visit was originally planned to coincide with the 25th
anniversary of the Chernobyl meltdown, which occurred on April 26,
1986.
But in the wake of the disaster in Japan, Ms Mironova and her
colleagues rewrote their presentations to compare the accident at
Chernobyl with Fukushima.