'It is nothing short of astonishing that the nuclear catastrophe we've all been told was "no big deal" has now escalated into the worst nuclear disaster in the history of human civilization. It's so bad now that soil samples taken from outside the 12-mile exclusion zone (the zone considered safe enough by the Japanese government for schoolchildren to attend school there) are higher than the 1.48 million becquerels a square meter limit that triggered evacuations outside Chernobyl in 1986.

In other words, the radiation level of the soil 12 miles from Fukushima is now higher than the levels considered too dangerous to live in near Chernobyl. This is all coming out in a new research report authored by Tomio Kawata, a fellow at the Nuclear Waste Management Organization of Japan. That same report also reveals that radiation from Fukushima has spread over 230 square miles.'

Read more: Land around Fukushima Now Radioactive Dead Zone; Resembles Target Struck by Atomic Bomb