Still, its threat level upgrade - from 5 to the maximum 7 like Chernobyl - should be a wakeup call.
"It's incorrect to say that it's on the same level as Chernobyl," Japanese-American physicist Michio Kaku, a professor at the City University of New York, told the Daily News.
"Chernobyl represents the high end of the category. Right now Fukushima would be more on the low end - about one-tenth the level of Chernobyl."
Japanese officials raised Fukushima's rating to the highest level on the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) accident severity index Tuesday - sending shock waves through surrounding villages and the international media.
Regulators stressed it didn't represent a worsening of the situation at the tsunami-crippled nuclear plant, just a reassessment of overall radiation leaks since the March 11 earthquake.
Kaku said Chernobyl's April 1986 disaster spewed radiation high into the upper atmosphere and over much of the Northern Hemisphere, making it much different from Fukushima.
"The Chernobyl accident literally happened within seconds. It sent roughly a quarter of the core into the atmosphere, and then there was a fire that raged for 10 days. It was a very concentrated 10 days of tremendous agony," he said.
"(With Fukushima) it's slow death - the opposite situation," he said. "Japan caught the accident in time, dumping sea water that prevented something more serious. But the reactors keep emitting radiation. At a certain point it could get very close to Chernobyl."
Kaku hopes the new rating "clears the way" for a widening of the evacuation radius from 12 miles to 20 or 25 miles.
"Displaced people will be unhappy, but they'll be even more unhappy if they come down with leukemia," he said.
"The utility has been trying to put the rosiest spin possible on this. They've been in denial. This upgrade puts them more in line with the calculations we've been making. It's a reality check for everyone."
He said the situation won't bottom out until workers restore the pumps that cool the nuclear reactors and spent fuel with a closed circuit of water.
"They're many months away from getting the pumps to work," he said. "It might not be until the end of the year."
He expects the whole site eventually will be entombed in concrete like Chernobyl.
In the meantime, he hopes Fukushima's owners start working more closely with the Japanese military and outside experts to spare the cleanup workers already risking their lives at the plant.
"Chernobyl went through 600,000 workers, with each spending just a short time at the site to avoid radiation sickness. Everyone got a medal," he said. "Many of the workers (at Fukushima) don't even know how much radiation they've absorbed. Some of them are going to die. They've probably received the lethal amount of radiation already." (Reference)
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