No, that actually seems extremely plausible. Thanks for posting actual numbers and units! Look at the units. That's NANOsieverts. So the old radiation level wa

No, that actually seems extremely plausible. Thanks for posting actual numbers and units! Look at the units. That's NANOsieverts. So the old radiation level was ~2x of what https://xkcd.com/radiation/ https://xkcd.com/radiation/ lists as the normal background level. Which m akes sense, because most of Chernobyl really isn't that bad nowadays. The new level is 65 microsieverts per hour. That's notable, but not some huge release of radiation, and it would still take days for you to hit the (annual) occupational hazard limit. The most plausible explanation, in my opinion, is that all the traffic kicked up a lot of contaminated dust. (Which is one of the reasons why you don't want to live there despite the "safe" radiation levels. The radiation level is only safe-ish as long as you don't breathe the dust.)