Comparison with Chernobyl
Comparison of the accidents at Chernobyl and Fukushima Dai-ichi
The International Nuclear Event Scale (INES) is used to classify safety-related events in nuclear plants on a scale from 1 to 7.
For a long time, the accident at Chernobyl on 26 April 1986 was the only one to have been assigned the highest level of 7. The accident at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant on 11 March 2011 has now also been classified by the responsible authorities at INES level 7.
This suggests a comparison between the origins, development and impact of the two events.
In fact, it has been repeatedly stressed − by ENSI among others − that an accident such as the one at Chernobyl is impossible in the case of reactors with a western design, which were also in use at Fukushima.