The earlier measurements were based on information obtained at a site approximately 1/2 a mile NorthWest of the WIPP facility, the Plutonium Cloud at that site measured approximately 110,000,000 Becquerels. The new ONSITE information is from a detector located near the ventilation exhaust shaft, where the normalized reading came out to be approximately 3 times higher..
Information current as of Saturday 2/22/14 indicate that the site is still emitting approximately 6,667 Becquerel every minute, assuming that the WIPP site is using their maximum ventilation rate of 20,000 cubic meters of mine exhaust air per minute.
So while the on going minute by minute releases are still quite large at 6,667 Becquerels, they are dispersed in 20,000 cubic meters of air each minute. The average person inhales 0.05 cubic meters of air per minute.
Hence, a person on site at the WIPP plant would be inhaling approximately 0.016668 Bq per minute, which works out to 1 Becquerel per hour. Thats why DOE wants to claim its safe for people on site: Of course, these values get significantly more dangerous when they are concentrated over a smaller area by rain, fog, or temperature inversion. Unfortunately the Midwest, especially Saint Louis experience all those concentrating factors between 2/14 and 2/17.
Carlsbad Town-hall WIPP meeting reporting 2x radioactive concentration in an onsite air filter exposed to 7 days of airflow, as opposed to approximately 5 days of airflow for the offsite monitor.