The Japanese have just raised the nuclear alert level of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant to 7, the highest possible level, and only reached once before, at Chernobyl:

Japan is to raise the nuclear alert level at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant to a maximum seven, putting the emergency on a par with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

Nuclear safety officials had insisted they had no plans to raise the severity of the crisis from five – the same level as the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 – according to the international nuclear and radiological event scale.

But the government came under pressure to raise the level at the plant after Japan’s nuclear safety commission estimated the amount of radioactive material released from its stricken reactors reached 10,000 terabecquerels per hour for several hours following the earthquake and tsunami that devastated the country’s northeast coast on 11 March. That level of radiation constitutes a major accident, according to the INES scale.

This ain’t an attempt to corner the market on glow in the dark watches, this is serious.