You know, every morning before I leave the house, I check the weather, the color-coded national security threat level (Update: still orange!) and the rating of the international nuclear event scale for my neighborhood. Also: Family Circus on my Google Reader.

And once it reaches a level 8 rating, Japan then qualifies for studen loan at lower intrest rates, which can earn you more terabecquerel miles, which you can cash in for free Krusty Burgers.

Our ratings go to 11.

Credentialed experts have been saying for several weeks that Fukushima Daiichi events met criteria for a Level 7 accident.

It's unfortunate that the choice of designation appears to be up to the government of the country in which a crisis occurs, at least until enough information leaks out (along with the radioactivity) to make the official line seem ridiculous. It's an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) scale, and they should take the lead, after due deliberation, in assigning the rating and revising up or down as data are refined. It doesn't interfere with sovereignty to state the obvious, and doing so improves the ability of neighboring countries (not to mention the citizens being most immediately irradiated) to minimize consequences.

Thanks for the update, Dr. Golob.

Once they get to Level 9, they can take the THX-1138 exit, and get the Golden Ticket for a lifetime supply of free Godzilla Choco!

http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Factshe…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internation…

I'm thinking we'll see the same thing repeated over and over because people's memory is short and greed is too pervasive. The irony, in my opinion, is thermal energy should be easy to get in Japan.

Queue the Goldy freakout in three...two...one...

TMI was a paltry incident, by any measure that concentrates on what got outside the plant. Per Wikipedia:

An inter-agency analysis concluded that the accident did not raise radioactivity far enough above background levels to cause even one additional cancer death among the people in the area. The EPA found no contamination in water, soil, sediment or plant samples.

Also:

Public reaction to the event was probably influenced by The China Syndrome, a movie which had recently been released and which depicts an accident at a nuclear reactor.

David, I don't disagree with your point, but we're lucky that TMI wasn't much worse. Amory Lovins points out that "Had Three Mile Island's containment dome not been built double-strength because it was under an airport landing path, it may not have withstood the 1979 accident's hydrogen explosion." The Davis-Besse corrosion problem was also a near-disaster.

Rob @10: Those are interesting factoids. Thanks for sharing. I enjoyed the resuling Wikipedia wander.

...unless you are in the immediate vicinity of the plant, there is little to no risk

Take the initial official statements from TEPCO of the danger near the plant. Divide them into the level of danger estimated in current statements.

Take that number and multiply by the quoted statement above about distant places.

Now you'll realize how dangerous it's become here.

The main thing is that we learned from Chernobyl, and have never let anything so terrible happen again. That's the main thing.

Because if we didn't learn from our mistakes, then we would be forced to admit that we are going to repeat them. And if we are going to repeat them, then we might be repeating them not just over there, but here.

But don't worry. We learn from our mistakes. Really.

My head hurts. How many orders of magnitude does it take to get from a microfuckingbecqueral to a terabecqueral?

There's no risk. Except for the fact that the scientific consensus is that there's no threshold to the carcinogenic effect of radiation.

But keep soft-peddling. Because The Industry expects you to be a Good Tool.

@14 One million becquerels is the radiation in one kilogram of low-level waste.

10,000 terabecquerels is the radiation in 10 billion kilograms of low-level waste. That's only 10 million tons. Per hour.

But don't worry, there's little to no risk.