Japan raises nuclear disaster rating to highest level

Japanese authorities announced they will raise their rating of the severity of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear crisis to the highest level on an international scale, equal to that of the 1986 Chernobyl accident.


Officials reclassified the ongoing emergency from level 5, an “accident with off-site risk,” to level 7, a “major accident.”


A level 7 accident, according to the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, is typified by a “major release of radioactive material with widespread health and environmental effects.”