Amid large aftershocks and fears of nuclear contamination rocking eastern Japan on a daily basis, it was the last thing anyone in the country needed to hear on Tuesday: that the crisis at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant 240km northeast of Tokyo had been upgraded suddenly by two notches from five to seven – the highest level on the International Atomic Energy Agency scale – on par with the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear meltdown disaster.
As nuclear crisis warnings go, it was one of the most baffling – and bafflingly timed – alerts ever issued by a government.
