Talk:International Nuclear Event Scale

Disaster management Start‑class Mid‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Disaster management, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Disaster management on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Disaster managementWikipedia:WikiProject Disaster managementTemplate:WikiProject Disaster managementDisaster management articles
Start	This article has been rated as Start-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Energy Start‑class Mid‑importance

	Energy portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Energy, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Energy on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.EnergyWikipedia:WikiProject EnergyTemplate:WikiProject Energyenergy articles
Start	This article has been rated as Start-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Page move

International Nuclear Events Scale → International Nuclear Event Scale – The official name has "event" not "events". The NRC, IEA and DOE all use "event". -- Kjkolb 04:34, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your vote with ~~~~

Support: a no-brainer Rwendland 13:41, 13 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Moved 17 Jan 2006 (unambiguous correction). Rd232 ^talk 16:15, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Is there level8?

Looks like an event worse then Chernobyl is possible. Is there a level8 for china syndrome or somethng like a terror attack?

Nope. INES scale goes from 0-7. Chernobyl was right in there with China Syndrome. http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Factsheets/English/ines.pdf Kgrr (talk) 18:05, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The article clearly states that, "Each increasing level represents an accident ten times more severe than the previous level." It also states that, "There are 7 levels on the INES scale." Anybody with a high-school education should be able to see that those two statements can not both be true, at least, not in the sense of "the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." If an accident were to occur that was ten times worse, or a hundred times worse than the Chernobyl disaster, what would you call it? If not level 8 or level 9, why not? The only reason to call such an accident a level 7 would be to hide the truth.141.158.89.71 (talk) 14:06, 27 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No what this means is each level is ten times worse, similarly to the Richter scale etc, a effectively limited number of levels is allowed. It may seem weird because there is an absolute limit and integers tend to be used in this scale. This is because it is one of the more subjective of scales. Eg example of such as scale :level 1:1, level 2:10, level 3:100... limited at 7 because it is not very useful beyond it. Also, I think we should just clarify that the 'China Syndrome' is fictional and impossible. Protectthehuman (talk) 21:39, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I also find it odd that Chernobyl is listed as an example of the most serious kind of nuclear accident, and additionally, none of the military accidents are ranked in this regard, such as the nuclear tests in the Pacific where the wind shifted etc. There are plenty of valid scenarios for far worse accidents then Chernobyl, in some cases, with factors of impact thousands of times worse and there are plenty of other comparable examples that are not less then 1/10th the scale of Chernobyl.--Senor Freebie (talk) 09:17, 16 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Examples"

Is Chernobyl really an "example"? I suspect that there have been few enough 5 6 and 7 events that we could just list all of them in each of those sections. — Omegatron 07:32, 26 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sure. Chernobyl reactor 4 is a good example for INES 7. Kyshtym and Mayak are good examples of an INES 6 accident. The Windscale fire and TMI-2 are both good examples for INES 5. Tokai-Mura is an example of an INES 4. http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Factsheets/English/ines.pdf http://annual-report.asn.fr/INES-scale.html Kgrr (talk) 18:20, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's not unusual to have only a few examples, or only one example, or maybe even just a hypothetical example at the highest level(s) of an example-based scale like the INES.141.158.89.71 (talk) 14:10, 27 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

level 7 bhopal comparison.

"An example of a non nuclear accident of roughly the same magnitude would be the Bhopal disaster which resulted in thousands of off-site deaths."

I was wondering what the meaning of the the sentence above is. It does not seem to be true that a disaster with about 50-70 causalities (can find references) is equated to an incident at Bhopal resulting in more immediate and more overall deaths. I have not altered this yet as there may be some official link between scales I am not aware of. Alternatively it may refer to conventional accidents and nuclear accidents in the context of the typical severity in each sector (giving one of the most severe conventional accident against the most deadly nuclear has to offer(which is less deadly)). Perhaps it is compared on the damage that was done to the public image of the two industries. All three of these seem to me to be misleading. Perhaps it is better to compare the accident to the coal explosion at Donbass, Ukraine in 1998, with a similar death toll, although other similar events would do (but it is hard to find statistics that include conventional accidents of as fewer deaths as Chernobyl).

The sentence lacks citations and, more than that, is obviously in error. I would appreciate feedback on this.

Protectthehuman (talk) 12:07, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Problematic comparrison.

In this article, I see an, in my eye, very problematic comparrison. But since I am just a regular school teacher and english isn't my maiden language, I don't feel that I am the right one to review this article.

The thing I found problematic is this.

"There are many examples of non nuclear accidents of roughly the same magnitude. Depending on the measure used for the damage done by Chernobyl, in the coal industry alone this includes either the 2006 coal mine methane explosion in the Donbass area (at most the fourth severest accident this area during the last 30 years), which left 36 dead; or severities up to the level of the 2000 accident in the same area, with 80 immediate fatalities."

by comparring Chernobyl with coal mine accidents simply based on the number of casualties, is in my view like comparring the running cababilities of a cheetah, with the running cababilities of a sloth only by counting the number of legs they have.

Some of the reasons for this is.

-It doesn't take into account the number of long terms healt effects on Pripyat and Kiev. -It doesn't take into account how close the Chernobyl was to have a massive moore casualties if draining of the water pool bellow the reactor wasn't done.

I urge someone with a suitable backgroud to edit this article.

Best Regards

Ballefras (talk) 06:52, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That was one of my edits to this article. Perhaps it was a bit of a crass comparison.

But it was a vast improvement on the one it replaced (see above talk thread). While the health effects did occur (Which I believe is the case), the articles about the coal mining accidents stick to the facts rather than speculating about health effects. We should really do the same. In fact, to make such a comparison, you would need to consider the health effects of coal from extraction to use (which is not very pleasant).

On your second point - it is not in the mandate of this article to speculate on the draining of the water pool. Furthermore, we could equally speculate on Donbass accidents.

And would you please show how this analogy is true (as analogy is not evidence): "by comparing Chernobyl with coal mine accidents simply based on the number of casualties, is in my view like comparing the running capabilities of a cheetah, with the running capabilities of a sloth only by counting the number of legs they have." What is special about nuclear accident causalities and conventional casualties. It seems to me your view that the less of the former is the same as much much more of the latter. What is this implied difference?

Protectthehuman (talk) 21:32, 12 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Chernobyl deaths

The Chernobyl disaster article cites the WHO estimate of the death toll at 56 direct deaths plus 4,000 extra cancer deaths from the 600000 most severley exposed people. Shouldn't the information here be similarly inclusive. After all, the off-site impact of a nuclear event is likely to be dominated by longer term radiation effects. -- Phil Barker 18:37, 27 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Shouldn't the article be referenced here if the numbers from another article are used? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.175.25.124 (talk) 05:15, 24 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

IAEA wording

I used exact IAEA definitions to describe event levels. -- eiland (talk) 10:02, 10 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Fukushima I unsuitable as Example

Just lately, the incident at the Fukushima Daishi nuclear power plant in the aftermath of the quake/tsumani disasters in Japan, March 11, 2011 was added as an example of a level 4 incident. It is quite unsuitable to do so for the following reasons:

 * It is an ongoing event. The outcome of the incident is being re-evaluated constantly. 
 * There are no independent accounts of the severity of the incident. It is based solely on a statement by Japan's nuclear safety agency issued about 2 hours ago.

Therefore, the entry should be deleted again until the situation has stabilized, the incident has been researched by the IAEA, and the scientific discussion reached an objective level. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.239.79.187 (talk) 16:52, 12 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sellafield:

Sellafield 1957 was INES 5 and Sellafield 2005 was INES 3. So INES 4 is wrong.