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Its damaged nuclear power plant and workers there. they are still frantically trying to avert a meltdown, possibly meltdowns, and some evacuees fleeing the danger zone are not surviving. details now from our own dr. sanjay gupta. >> reporter: brooke, obviously the big news today talking about the classification of this nuclear accident. on a scale of 1 to 7, they are classifying this as a 5. a little bit of context. chernobyl was a 7, but this now puts it on par with what happened at three mile island, saying this is a nuclear accident with widespread consequences. the workers, brooke, in this...

They know in some cases they're going to die. >> yeah, they certainly know the deal here specifically in terms of the radiation. they're looking at levels presumably, also trying to figure out what that means for them. one of the things is, they try and protect themselves as much as possible, even with masks like this, for example. we showed suits as well, but they don't do that much in terms of the most dangerous forms of radiation, these gamma rays. these are devices which they're probably carrying around. this one measures the background gamma radiation, and if there's concern, it will go u...

Nuclear meltdown and fears spread over radiation in japan, a u.s. company is donating special radiation protection suits that they say block x-rays, nuclear emissions and gamma rays. orlando salinas is live at radiation shield technologies in florida today. orly? >> reporter: jenna, you're hitting it right on the head. this company, radiation shield technology, says its product can block all the bad stuff that we're seeing right now, we're talking about taking place in japan. jenna, we just saw a video of some of those very simple suits. they look like hospital scrubs that the japanese workers...

Particularly the radiation levels, we know there's no power. they're probably doing this in the darkness or using flashlights. wearing protective suits that seal around the neck and wearing a mask to provide some protection. again, the most dangerous types of radiation, the gamma rays that we've been talking about, they penetrate just about everything. you can measure how much radiation you're getting using certain devices like these. carol, i mean, this is what they do for a living. they know -- how dangerous this is. and yet they have a lot of work to do, and they're including putting out fi...

Gamma rays are external to their body, like being in an extra machine. it's passing through that bubble suit and there's only a limited amount of stay time that they can be in the area. >> so what does that mean for the 180 workers? there have been differing opinions about what is going to happen to those that are cycling through as they desperately try to avert an even bigger nuclear crisis for their country. >> well the rule of thumb is that 250 rem of radiation will definitely give you cancer. if 100 people get 2.5 rem, somebody in that 100 is going to get cancer. they're probably getting 1...