Japan = Chernobyl

[Rocky]

Japanese authorities Tuesday "provisionally" declared the country's nuclear accident a level-7 event on the international scale for nuclear disasters -- the highest level -- putting it on par with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

Read more at Japan nuclear agency raises threat level - CNN.com


Sounds like the Japanese were downplaying the whole situation to the world? Like the report said, I don't think it really changes a whole lot in terms of overall devastation towards what happened, because the former category (a level-5) meant it was on par with Three Mile Island in the US, which in retrospect, did a lot less damage then what is going on right now in Japan.

So yeah, just more news from Japan, thought I'd post a new thread for discussion.

[Dark-Knight Luna]

Everybody downplays their disasters to the world, so they look LESS vulnerable. America does it a crapton, you should see what they put on international news vs what REALLY happened.
I've said it once, and I'll say it again, humans are natural liars.

[Kaiden]

No government in the world can cover up disasters like this or what happened in the gulf. Any news agency can find someone willing to talk about something like this.

As to the actual article. It even stated this nuclear disaster isn't close to what Chernobyl was. The amount of damage is still a lot and I'm sure more damage will come but any government/agency will hope for the best until they find the worst. So the threat levels will always be lower at the start. The big thing I get from this article is the fact that it doesnt seem like they have a long term solution/plan in place for the damaged cores yet. They have no idea when they are going to be fixed they are still just trying to contain the problem.

[SOLDIER #819]

Various organizations haven't been completely open about the situation, but it's not simply because they're just trying to save their own asses or downplay it. They're not omniscient and they can't predict the future. Things happen, ratings with arbitrary numbers change, and there is very little that can be done to prevent it. Thankfully, a "7" doesn't mean very much on its own. Molten core gas isn't freely spewing out the top of any of the reactors. It's the same number assigned to Chernobyl, but that does not mean that Japan is similar to Chernobyl.

People are looking for a complete assessment of the situation when something like that is simply impossible. It wasn't over when that rating was placed at "5" and won't be over now at "7", and things will continue to change. The media hasn't been doing anything but feeding everybody isolated bits of information and generally causing panic, which I hope is accidental and not simply to up their own ratings (even though it probably is). For some reason people in my area aren't doing a lick of research and just eating this shit up without question, along with their potassium iodide pills or whatever.

[Block]

Well I must say, I hope all the rich video game creators got to safety. Also my heart goes out to the people of Japan, for they are doomed to have low level radiation problems forever.