Dive Summary:
- Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) may raise the severity rating of water leaks at the now-defunct Fukushima nuclear plant from level 1 to level 3.
- Radioactive water was already leaking into the Pacific Ocean at the rate of 300 tons per day, but a newfound leak in a storage tank is raising questions as to whether the situation should be classified as an "anomaly" (level 1) or a "serious incident" (level 3), as defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency's International Nuclear Event Scale.
From the article:
The leak had previously been assigned a level 1 "anomaly" rating, but the increase to level 3 is scheduled for formal adoption by the authority's commissioners later on Wednesday after a meeting that is currently under way, a spokesman for the agency told Reuters by phone. [...]
Each one-step increase on the INES scale represents a 10 times increase in severity, according to a factsheet on the website of the International Atomic Energy Agency.