Japan Raises Nuclear Alert Level

The Japanese nuclear safety agency has upgraded the crisis at the Fukushima power plant from a 4 to a 5 on a 7-point scale.

A level-4 nuclear incident is defined as having local consequences, whereas a level-5 incident has a wider impact. Japanese officials would not say what prompted the change, but upgrading the alert level is a clear sign that efforts to cool the overheated Fukushima nuclear power plant are not going as planned. Friday the Japanese military abandoned helicopter missions it had begun a day earlier to dump water on the plant’s reactors. Video footage showed much of the air-dropped water was blowing away in the wind. On Friday fire trucks continued to spray the plant with water in a bid to cool reactors and replenish the storage pool where spent uranium rods are kept.