The world's worst nuclear accident, at Chernobyl on April 26, 1986, marked its 25th anniversary Tuesday amid Japanese anxiety and wavering self-confidence over the March 11 earthquake-tsunami and the resultant nuclear crisis. Power industry people, government leaders, nuclear regulators and nuclear power academics should take a serious view of the severity of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant crisis, now rated at the maximum 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale - the same as for the Chernobyl accident.
Following Chernobyl, Japan's power industry at the time maintained that a similar accident could not happen in Japan because its reactors in use were of a different type than the Soviet-era reactors at the doomed plant in Ukraine.
But what has happened at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant has completely undermined the power industry's attempt to convince people that nuclear power generation is risk-free.