TND Exclusive: By Eric Dubin |
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).