"Now 1,000 microsieverts (per hour)!"
The shout by a Tokyo Electric Power Co. worker, in full face mask and seamless white protective suit, sent tension high among the 18 journalists aboard a slow-moving bus inside the compound of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
As the bus moved near the badly damaged reactor 2 building, a radiation meter spiked to a level about 18,000 times higher than the everyday reading in Tokyo.