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People today are comparing the Fukushima disaster to what happened in Chernobyl and the Three Mile Island yet experts says this is not the case. The Chernobyl accident spread radioactive material over a large area, but this was due to a massive fire of graphite in the reactor. The Fukushima reactors does not use graphite in the core. Instead they use water to control the temperature as uranium degrades in a nuclear chain reaction at the reactors' core, creating steam that drives an...   >>>

People today are comparing the Fukushima disaster to what happened in Chernobyl and the Three Mile Island yet experts says this is not the case. The Chernobyl accident spread radioactive material over a large area, but this was due to a massive fire of graphite in the reactor. The Fukushima reactors does not use graphite in the core. Instead they use water to control the temperature as uranium degrades in a nuclear chain reaction at the reactors' core, creating steam that drives an electricity-generating turbine.



Now, both Chernobyl and Three Mile Island were caused by human and technical error. Fukushima was caused by nature and human error. In addition, there was no evidence that the core at Fukushima had all melted like what happened at Three Mile Island.



Base on the International Nuclear Events Scale (INES), the danger Fukushima poses is not as high as the one posed in Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Using a scale of 1 to 7, INES said that the intensity of radiation from Chernobyl was a 7 and it was a 5 in the Three Mile Island accident. In comparison, the potential intensity from a projected Fukushima nuclear leak is at around 3 or 4.



Photo: 7 News