Radiation Alerts Hit U.S. Cities

WND – by Bob Unruh

A private organization that monitors data from thousands of government and other network points for radiation across the United States issued email alerts today for two western U.S. cities, Reno, Nev., and St. George Utah.

The alerts come from the the Nuclear Emergency Tracking Center, which explains its mission is to provide radiation monitoring information from hundreds of sites, including those run by the Environmental Protection Agency, across the United States and Japan.  

The warning pinpointed an area “of concern” in St. George, Utah, where it said background radiation levels more than doubled today from the typical reading.

It also named Reno, Nev., for concern, where “the current background radiation level has increased suddenly by more than 200 points from the typical average.”

The report said the “counts per minute” at St. George reach an all-time high of 456, where the average is 222 with a normal deviation of 55.

At Reno, the county suddenly surged quickly, although the CPM was only 462, where the all time high reached 542. There the average is 279 with a deviation of 56.2.

NETC.com founder Harlan Yother told WND that he’s seeing more and more surges of radiation, where levels rise along the West Coast of the United States, then move across the nation from west to east. This always follows by two or three days a rise in monitor levels in Japan, home of the Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster in 2011, he said.

In fact, a previous alert, from Nov. 26, specifically cited the Fukishima, Japan, nuclear disaster, where a power plant was struck first by an earthquake, then by a tidal wave created by the undersea quake.

The organization reports that several of the individual reactors at Fukushima melted down and exploded, releasing massive doses of radiation into the air and water.

Yother said the records show that Seattle, which once was one of the lowest radiation reporting sites in the nation, has been rising ever since the disaster.

“We can tell it has been increasing,” he said.

Officials with the Utah and Nevada offices of emergency management did not immediately respond to WND questions about the readings. Nor did the Department of Homeland Security respond.

The website offered some basic advice for when radiation levels rise:

“You may wish to close windows in your home or office to keep radiation out, and remove shoes upon entering your home, perhaps rinsing them off so as not to track radiation into the home. You may also consider using near-the-door coat racks to hang external coats or jackets you wore outside so as to keep any radiation that may have accumulated upon them, in one location and not have it throughout your home.”

The Fukushima disaster developed in the aftermath of the March 11, 2011, quake. The cooling equipment at the plant failed, allowing the reactors to melt down and creating what officials call the largest nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986. It was the second disaster, along with Chernobyl, to measure Level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale.

Russia Today reported just yesterday that Tokyo is looking to spent $970 million to store 130,000 tons of contaminated soil dug out from near the crippled power plant.

The government also wants to buy up to five square kilometers of land to build a storage facility.

The plant was designed by General Electric and run by the Tokyo Electric Power Company. And it was revealed that as of last July, the plant was leaking tons of heavily contaminated water into the Pacific.

In addition to the email alert, the NETC.com map revealing four concern points across the western United States, including three in California and one inland a few hundred miles.

These were listed at Radcon 4, only one step from an alert, the map showed.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/12/radiation-alerts-hit-u-s-cities/#SCRb8SY04SsGqfR8.99