Nuclear Crisis is WORSENING + Another Earthquake 6.1

According to CTV:

Responding to Japan's struggle to contain a possible nuclear catastrophe, the French nuclear safety authority has upgraded the severity of the ongoing accident to level six out of seven on the international scale.

Level seven on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale has been invoked only once, following the 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine.

The head of France's Nuclear Safety Authority, Andre-Claude Lacoste told reporters on Tuesday that the situation in Japan is less severe than the core explosion at Chernobyl, but worse than the 1979 partial core meltdown at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania.

"We are now in a situation that is different from yesterday's. It is very clear that we are at a level six, which is an intermediate level between what happened at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl," the ASN president said at a news conference in Paris.

The incident at Three Mile Island was rated a level 5, which corresponds to "an accident with wider consequences," while level 6 is reserved for a "serious accident." Japanese officials had rated the situation at the plant in Fukushima prefecture as a 4 on the seven-point scale, meaning it's an accident with "local consequences."

But, pointing to the explosions that continued to wrack the Dai-ichi nuclear plant despite days of frantic efforts to cool them, Lacoste said the outlook is worsening.

"We are clearly in a catastrophe," he said.

Radiation levels spike, drop

Lacoste's announcement came as a Japanese nuclear safety official said water inside a waste storage pool at the crippled Dai-ichi plant may be boiling, just hours after radiation levels spiked then dropped after a fire erupted at its No. 4 reactor.

Japanese Economy Ministry spokesperson Hidehiko Nishiyama told reporters that "we cannot deny the possibility of water boiling" in the Dai-ichi nuclear power plant's spent fuel storage pool.

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At the point of writing, another earthquake at the depth of 10km just struck the area of Tokyo (Tokai region) at 9.31pm. (Malaysian time).

Details OVER HERE.

Check HERE.