Sounds like that means rampant radiation spewing for 3 months.
This is no longer front page, but it rivals Chernobyl that stayed front page.
Wonder what the difference is?
“Sounds like that means rampant radiation spewing for 3 months.”
Exaggerate much?
The difference is that the containment buildings housing the reactors in Japan have never been breached. Chernobyl did not have a containment building. If it had, the radiation should have been contained.
The press keeps confusing the radiation coming from the spent fuel pools as coming from the reactors. The Japanese screwed the pooch when they esentially housed the spent fuel buildings within structural steel pole buildings. American nukes use hydrogen recombiners and igniters to remove or flare the hydrogen before it builds to excessive levels.
Much of that was added after the hydrogen bubble scare at TMI when the core melted.
Drop the chicken-little and step away from the slaughtering table of hysteria.
The difference is that there is a great deal of selectivity being applied to the use of the IAEA standards. Everyone focuses on the activity release, which isn't really the operable factor in determining the impact of an event (see below). There are other categories in the INES that rate this much lower. The category for "Effects on People and the Environment", for example. Since there have been no radiation-related fatalities, it does not reach even a Level 4 based on that category.
The reason why total activity release is not the sole determining factor is that cumulative dose is really what determines the effects on people and the environment. At Chornobil, you had collective population doses in the thousands or tens of thousands of person-rem range. At this point, the Fukushima event will probably end up in the tens of person-rem range. Chornobil had higher cumulative exposures because of wider release (a fire-driven source term, which increases airborne releases much more than sporadic events, like hydrogen detonations) and less effective evacuation. A lot of people in the Ukraine did not leave the affected areas when they should have, and so ingested significant quantities of contaminants from the food chain, much more than you have in the present instance.