VIENNA (Kyodo) The crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant ranks between the accidents at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, a senior U.N. official said Wednesday.
Wolfgang Weiss, chairman of the U.N. Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, said the situation that resulted in Fukushima from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami isn't as big in scale as the 1986 Chernobyl incident in the former Soviet Union, but is far more serious than the 1979 Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania.
Noting the Fukushima plant faces the Pacific, Weiss told a news conference that its impact on human beings has been smaller than the Chernobyl disaster, which spewed radioactive substances across Europe.