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Japan raises nuclear emergency to highest level, at par with Chernobyl

TOKYO: Japan upgraded its nuclear emergency to a maximum seven on an international scale of atomic crises on Tuesday, the first time the highest ranking has been invoked since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. The regrading to a "major accident" with "widespread health and environmental effects" puts Fukushima on a par with the world's worst ever peacetime nuclear event 25 years ago in the then Soviet Union. Japan's Nuclear Safety Agency said radiation emissions from the Pacific coast plant, whose cooling system was knocked out by a massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11, were equal to 10 percent of the Chernobyl catastrophe. Safety agency official Hidehiko Nishiyama said, however, that the two events were markedly different. "In Chernobyl, there was acute exposure to a high level of radiation, and 29 people died from it. This is not the case in Fukushima," he said. "In Chernobyl, reactors themselves exploded. In Fukushima... the reactors themselves have stayed intact, although we are seeing some leakage." The earthquake and tsunami that crippled the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in northeast Japan is confirmed to have killed 13,219 people, with over 14,000 more still unaccounted for. Nuclear experts have said a partial meltdown took place when the cooling systems failed, causing a series of explosions that leaked radioactive material into the atmosphere. Tens of thousands of residents were evacuated from an exclusion zone covering a 20-kilometre (12-mile) radius from the plant and many more living close by have been advised to stay indoors. On Monday the government said it would order people to leave certain areas outside the exclusion zone due to concerns over the effect of long-term exposure to radiation, but that a uniform extension of the zone was not appropriate. Emergency crews at the plant have battled around the clock to bring the disaster under control and on Monday the government said the danger of a large leak of radioactive materials was becoming "significantly smaller".

                                                                                                               
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