Paper
A close study of five crises makes clear that Cold War logic doesn’t apply to the South Asia nuclear powers.
Moeed Yusuf, Rizwan Zeb
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Source: Getty
In The Media
Japan Crisis Not As Bad As Chernobyl
As Japanese authorities work to cool the nuclear reactors damaged by the earthquake and tsunami, it remains unclear how much radiation is being released into the environment.
Published on Mar 16, 2011
Source: NBC
As the crisis deepens at the Daiichi reactors in Fukushima, Japanese authorities are working to cool the reactors and limit the spread of radiation. The severity of the situation is both unclear and fluid, since measuring gauges at the Daiichi reactors are unreliable and radiation levels have fluctuated greatly on-site. Speaking on NBC’s Today Show, Carnegie’s James Acton describes the Fukushima reactor crisis as worse than Three Mile Island, though less disastrous than Chernobyl. During the Chernobyl catastrophe, Acton said, a significant fraction of the reactor core explosively spread into the environment. In Japan, the primary threat comes from the melting of the reactor core, exposing fuel rods to the atmosphere. The amount of radiation that will be released from such melting is unclear, Acton concluded.
Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.
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