The Guardian article you quote is I believe inaccurate. That was a new reading that was taken inside the reactor building. There was no increase in radiation.
If you stand inside the containment vessel your probably going to have a bad time.
That doesn't tell you much about how long you'd survive in a nearby town... and in fact there are individuals who have refused to leave, who are currently ok:
Well, yes and no. The article does cover an increase in radiation:
> Even if a 30-percent margin of error is taken into account, the recent reading, described by some experts as “unimaginable”, is far higher than the previous record of 73 sieverts an hour detected by sensors in 2012.
But it is talking about the reactor. That does not immediately translate into a high radiation level outside, but it shows the potential radiation level we are dealing with. At least in the beginning that radiation leaked, and that might happen again.
Also in Chernobyl there are people living in the zone. If they are old enough that they will die before the radiation will cause cancer, and they are never unlucky enough to step into a pocket of escaping reactor radiation, that's probably not too bad.
It was widely mis-reported at the time. However, they had never reported a radiation reading from this location before. The title of the article is "Fukushima nuclear reactor radiation at highest level since 2011 meltdown". That is not true. It's just have they have a new reading that's higher than previously recorded because it's further inside the reactor.
A better description of the readings can be found here:
I mean yes it matters to me and to my friends who live in Japan.
Suggesting that levels are increasing implies that new material might be leaving the reactor or that the reactor is becoming less stable. That further implies that you need to re-evaluate the radiation levels in your region and if it's safe to stay there.
It is higher because the measurements were taken closer to the core. If anything, these measurements are good news, because they demonstrate a substantial fuel concentration right there, still inside the containment vessel, which puts limits on the amount that may have leaked. What would have been bad news would be not finding any significant radiation source.
I think the worst reporting on it I've seen was when Robert X Cringely regurgitated a blogspam that badly mangled the Guardian article on it, and used it as "evidence" for an impending "China Syndrome" style meltdown, without even any evidence of a containment vessel breach:
If you stand inside the containment vessel your probably going to have a bad time.
That doesn't tell you much about how long you'd survive in a nearby town... and in fact there are individuals who have refused to leave, who are currently ok:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-sight/wp/2016/03/11/c...