UPDATE: I made a mistake in interpreting the online calculator’s output for the International Commission on Radiological Protection rating scale. When in doubt, pen and paper and manual calculations should be performed! Lesson learned. I thought the online calculator generated a 9.2043 multiple for annual limit rather than the 9.2043 “Annual limit” per the ICRP scale, where 20 is considered the “safe” limit for exposure over the course of one year during a five year period of sustained exposure of 100 total. With that in mind, the measurement reading is far less stark and no cause for alarm. But now I’m wondering about the veracity of the test data that was reported in the first place given the report of the average as 226 nSv/h. What caused the sudden leap over the average? Reporting error?
This was only a single report at that station tracked by the NETC.com website. Now, the report is not even on their map/site! This is strange.
Bottom-line: It appears no conclusion can be drawn from this other than to say the spread between the average and the reported jump might have had some sort of error, and that’s entirely speculation on my part. The fact that the report is no longer on the NETC map, and other reporting stations didn’t generate alerts, makes this all the more odd. Given all this, CONSIDER THIS A FORMAL RETRACTION. I will leave this published as is, and I will update this story if more information is available. — Eric Dubin
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Independent monitoring in Iwaki City, Japan reported to the Nuclear Emergency Tracking Center (NETC) logged a huge spike in radiation with a reading coming in at 21,000 nSv/hour, versus a baseline average reading of 226. According to the International Commission on Radiological Protection, that equates to over 9 times the “annual limit” for exposure. A conversion calculator is located online (click here) where you can compute this figure.
Iwaki City is about 30 miles south of the damaged TEPCO reactors. Click here to see a Google map for perspective, where point “A” is Iwaki City and point “B” is the coordinates for the damaged reactors.
Earlier this month there have been reports of steam coming out of the building housing reactor #3. Steam was reported on at least two separate occasions earlier this year. TEPCO had claimed that a “puddle” of water was responsible for one of those earlier steam releases. This month, TEPCO admitted steam was released again from the same reactor #3. A translation of a posting on their website was published by ENENews; click here to visit that page or here to pull up a PDF “screen capture” saved to guarantee a copy exists going forward.
Oliver Tickell, writing for The Ecologist, speculates on three possible causes for the steam. Click here for his perspective.
At this time, we do not have confirmation that the steam reports are related to this radiation reading. This situation deserves close monitoring. The News Doctors will have ongoing coverage as more information becomes available. If you have tips or feedback on this breaking story, please provide them in the comments section below (Click here to pull up the original story to read/leave comments if you happen to be reading a copy on another site).
