By IANS,
Mumbai : There is no increase in radiation levels in India over and above the natural, the country’s nuclear regulatory authority said Tuesday, even as Japan raised the severity of the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant to level 7, bringing it at par with Chernobyl.
In a statement, the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) said that the data received from the Indian Environmental Radiation Monitoring Network till date shows that there is no increase in radiation levels at various locations within the country.
The AERB’s assurance came in the wake of Japan Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency Tuesday issuing a revised provisional IAEA International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, assessing the Fukushima accident at level 7 from the earlier level 5 for reactors 1, 2 and 3.
The Japanese authorities have estimated that the amount of radioactive material released in the atmosphere is around 10 percent of the 1986 Chernobyl (now Ukraine) accident which was also level 7.
The AERB said it continued to closely monitor the events at Fukushima in the wake of the March 11 earthquake, followed by a tsunami and the subsequent nuclear accident.
“AERB is also keeping a close watch on the radiation levels in Japan and India through a specially constituted monitoring cell,” it said.
It has also constituted a high-level committee to review the safety of the Indian nuclear power plants and the committee has already started its deliberations on the issue.