High radiation levels at the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant prompted Japan’s government on Monday to raise the severity rating of the crisis from 5 to 7 — the highest level on an international scale, and one on par with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Learn more about the crisis — and its short- and long-term effects — by viewing a webcast of the Baker Institute’s April 8 panel discussion “Japan: The Aftermath.”
The panel featured Rice University physics professor Paul Padley, Ph.D.; Amy Myers Jaffe, the Wallace S. Wilson Fellow in Energy Studies and director of the Energy Forum at the Baker Institute; radiation oncologist Dr. James D. Cox, who oversees the new proton treatment center at the MD Anderson Cancer Center; and Erich A. Schneider, Ph.D., an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at The University of Texas at Austin who specializes in nuclear engineering.