BTW, as a reality check, as bad as Chernobyl was, most deaths were not the fault of the reactor accident, per se—they were the fault of incompetence (not in design, though that was a contributor to the accident) in the response. That US Airways flight that ditched in the Hudson was a "disaster" where no one was killed. As an analogy to what they are doing with this "level" hype, it's like saying Flight 1549 was a disaster of the same level as the flight that crashed in Isparta, Turkey that killed 155 people—USAir Flight 1549 held 155, too, after all! They could have died.

Meaning that while the reactor clearly killed people, people died almost entirely because of the stunning incompetence of the management of the disaster. Workers were simply thrown away. People were not properly evacuated, then afterwards, no one controlled what people ate, etc. Virtually every step of the Chernobyl response was handled more than a little wrong. Handled properly (or even merely if it had not been handled with gross incompetence), Chernobyl would have had a death toll well under an order of magnitude lower than it did—and the situation was far worse than Fukushima.

:rotfl2::rotfl2::rotfl2:
Just started playing Shadow of Chernobyl last night with the complete 2009 mod going. I missed it sooo much.

And good points Tater, The way the USSR handled Chernobyl was a trainwreck at best. I don't see that kind of response at the Japanese NPP, I think its been well-handled, given the situation.

Well technically... no. There is no requirement for anyone to have died for a rating of 4 to be applied. It only has to be determined that a level of radiation that could have killed someone was present. No actual deaths are required.

INES Users Manual 2008 Edition

On Page 2, it does say that if a person dies of radiation exposure the incident is, at a minimum, a level 4.

But on Page 19 it states

This is why Three Mile Island could be classified as a level 5, but no one died.

Interesting.

How do they determine "could have?" Strikes me that at any particular rate above a certain level you can get a lethal dose by simply spending enough time. Conversely, you can avoid a lethal dose (or even a dangerous one) by limiting the time spent.

Regardless, apparently there have been 28 workers who got a dose (total) between 100 and 250 (none exceeded that) spread over weeks. There are potentially lethal doses in the plant someplace, but no one has gotten close, obviously.

That is absolutely correct and what makes calculations about lethal doses of radiation difficult for the "sound byte" public to understand.