No new emergency: Japan

The crisis, triggered by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, was reclassified on Tuesday as being “equivalent to 7 on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES).

P. S. Suryanarayana

SINGAPORE: Japan is assuring the international community that the mark-up of nuclear radiation crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant “is not due to any new emergency” there.

The crisis, triggered by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, was reclassified on Tuesday as being “equivalent to 7 on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES).”

In an independent assessment, the Vienna-based IAEA endorsed Japan's view of the crisis in and around the Fukushima civil-nuclear plant. Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said “the latest analysis of data” was “not a new emergency” led to the new rating .

Backing this view, the IAEA said the new rating was based on “the total amount of radioactivity released into the environment” since March 11...