Japan nuke crisis not as bad as Chernobyl, but worse than Three Mile Island: Experts

Tokyo, Apr.7 (ANI): Wolfgang Weiss, UN Chairman of the Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation has said that the ongoing nuclear crisis at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi complex, is not as severe as the 1986 nuclear crisis in Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union, but is worse than the 1979 Three Mile Island disaster in the United Sates.

Weiss said that since the Fukushima plant faces the Pacific Ocean, the impact of the crisis is smaller on human beings is smaller than the Chernobyl disaster, where radioactive substances spread to Europe from the troubled nuclear power plant located inland.

Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety agency had earlier put the severity level of the crisis at the Fukushima nuclear complex at level 5 on an international scale, the same level as the Three Mile Island accident.

However, experts predict that the severity level of the disaster will reach 6 or higher with work still going on to bring the crisis under control.

The Chernobyl catastrophe was marked at level 7 on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, the highest so far. (ANI)