As many know, I’m a big fan of citizen science. There’s much that can be contributed by the layman that the government often cannot or will not do.
Since many people seem to be worried about nuclear fallout from Japan’s nuclear reactors, particularly on the west coast, I’m happy to introduce this live map, updated every five minutes, from the volunteer operated National Radiation Network.
Since this is likely to be popular, and to minimize the page loads on the website, I’ve put the image beyond the “read more” divider. Please only click if you are interested in seeing the live USA radiation counts map:
The map is updated every 5 minutes.
Key to the map:
Nuclear Power Site Location
Alert Level = 100 CPM (counts per minute)
As you can see from the four west coast stations, there does not appear to be any elevated activity in radiation counts. The CPM is a unit of measurement for a Geiger counter, corresponding directly to the audible beeps or clicks per minute. CPM is the standard unit of measurement for alpha and beta radiation, and is also commonly used to express background radiation in numerical terms.
Normal background radiation is typically in the range of 25-75 counts per minute, depending on location and surroundings. Much of the natural background radiation comes from cosmic rays in addition to natural decay of earth bound elements. Of course, if somebody drives a banana truck into your neighborhood, that may change.
You can become part of this network if you are interested by purchasing a datalogging geiger counter and the network software to enable you to plug into and submit live data to the network via your office or home internet connection. Images below show a digital Geiger counter and the software with the RS232 interface cable.
Unfortunately, the company, MineralLab announced on their website that they are completely sold out due to the demand in wake of the Japan reactor events.
Bookmark it for future use if you are interested and visit again when this all settles down.
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In related news, a similar setup is operating online in Tokyo. The one week graph is certainly encouraging.
Denphone Tokyo Office Geiger Counter
Posted: 2011-03-16 2:28 pm by Simon Gibson.
Here are the outputs from the Geiger Counter in our office in Azabujuban, Tokyo:
4 hour reading
24 hour reading
One week reading
h/t to Poptech for the original map link.
Pardon,
The 0900 hours is European time.
Baa;
Time for turnabout.
Suggest they push a new slogan: “Get your Hormesis protective dose every day! Radiation doctors recommend 2-4 bananas.”
And the Instructibles site just informed me how to make 1-ingredient ice cream from them! Somewhat browned overripe bananas, hard frozen, chopped up, blended and then whipped for 3-4 minutes. Add vanilla, chocolate, berries, honey, etc. to taste.
Q: What are “Nuclear Power Site Location”s?
Q: Why are the numbers 2 to 3 times higher in Denver/Boulder than in Colorado Springs/Pueblo? Is the first one on top of Mt. Evans and the second one inside Cheyenne Mountain?
Q: What is that third location behind Denver/Boulder?
A: Many have asked for more details on Monitoring Stations and Nuclear Sites, etc. We would love to give all the data away free, and spend unlimited hours posting all of it on the web site for public benefit, but we fund this network out of our own pocket through the sales of our GeigerGraph for Networks Software that makes this all possible. So if you want the full capabilities of the Network, the Maps, and the Data, we ask that you shell out a few bucks for the software. Sorry – a little capitalism at work here – it’s how we make our living.
So the main point is this: We need more Monitoring Stations! The data is thin.
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So thin that they have a total of 11 monitoring sites on the map, including (it looks like) their own in AZ … and they can’t post the locations?
Readers here would snort milk out their noses if they saw such undocumented info on an alarmist site.
OK so you have cracked the gamma what about alpha and beta and those danged neutrons.
I do not think that you will have any effect on the west coast. Even full blown ‘A’ and ‘H’ bomb testing in the Pacific had any real effect on the west coast but I suppose those Californians have to worry about something.
Thank you so much Leg for your informative posts
I am in central Missouri. I have a Medcom Radalert model 50. At this moment (7 AM), I had a count 58 taken over a period of 200, or 17.4 CPM. This is in the range of normal for these soil conditions.
Roger Sowell, “Here’s another data set, (see the link below) to US EPA’s RadNet data, for radiation counters across the USA. There are many other datasets in this also. One must register first, then obtain free access to the databank.
https://cdx.epa.gov/SSL/CDX/Login.asp
The RadNet data is taken hourly, and has beta and several types of gamma radiation counts from the stations. There are archives, data downloading in Excel(tm) and plotting capabilities. For a government website, not bad, actually.”
Roger, thanks for the link but that has the most absurd log in requirements I have run across, password must be 8 characters that include one uppercase character, one lowercase character and one number but the password cannot begin or end with a number? Who the hell is doing IT security work for the EPA? That makes no sense. Restricting a password from beginning or ending with a number simply makes it easier crack. It is always better to make password requirements longer not harder to remember otherwise you simply waste time and resources recovering them because no one can remember them. Not to mention your account has to be I am assuming manually “verified” before they give you access? Access to what? Geiger counter readings? Silly. My concern is how are they “verifying” accounts since they are asking for full names, addresses and phone numbers. I will soon find out as I made a bogus account in Beverly Hills. If that does not work I bet it will go through with a random phone book entry. Leave it up to the government to make a service that should be easily accessible and freely available into some arcane process that does nothing to improve security.
Anthony- Map issue!!
Your map shows a nuclear power plant icon just to the east of Kansas City. That is not a power plant, but what is known locally as “the Bendix Plant”, a government facility south of downtown where components to nuclear weapons are manufactured. As far as I know, no nuclear materials are kept there. The only reason for it to be on any map is that after 9/11, when the government established no-fly zones around nuclear power plants, they also put one around this facility as well. Local pilots were bemused because we were sternly warned not to transit this airspace, but we were steadfastly refused every request for the geographic coordinates of the center of the forbidden circle. We must not go there, but we couldn’t know exactly where ‘there’ was. The forbidden area was far more for FAA radar scopes than for our aircraft navigation systems, that is unless you even clipped the boundary.
There are two nuclear research reactors in Missouri. Both are open pool designs operated by the University of Missouri. One is in Columbia, and one in Rolla. There is a nuclear power plant operated by AmerenUE just to the south east of Fulton. That one is depicted on your map.
Anthony, you forgot the link,
http://www.radiationnetwork.com/
Bloomberg comment: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-18/worst-case-nuclear-disaster-doesn-t-pose-threat-beyond-36-miles-from-site.html
Much ado about nothing. I lived through open air testing in the 50s.
omg, I am laughing sooo hard at the messages on that poor geiger counter company’s homepage… So hysterical that they’ve been so swamped with orders that they straight out say, “We are not answering e-mails..”
LOL
Kind of a shame, a personal geiger counter sounds like a fun useless bit of technology to have lying around the apartment. I’ll wait until American’s get a f-ing grip on this stupid overblown scare and order one.
I’ve been telling everyone I know that there is no danger, the media is wrong. In fact, I find all this local reporting to be so horrifically irresponsible as to be worthy of an investigation.
These reactors in Japan are at ground level, and any radioactive particles that make it across the pacific still radioactive will generally *not* be gaseous, they will be solid particulate. Solid particulates FALL from the atmosphere (sometimes slowly), but they don’t easily remain aloft over a week-long trip across the ocean where rainstorms likely cleared the air of dust a few times.
Yet if you watch the local news, they show this absurd “model” plot of a radiation “plume” starting at Japan, and growing tremendously in area while losing zero potency from the dispersal shown nor the half-life of the material. It literally starts off as a small cloud of orange-to-blue gradient, and turns into a gigantic area of yellow and green (of whatever units, the reporters of course don’t tell you what the units of the color plot are), which is not reality.
Geeks with Geiger counters. What a great world we live in. Everyone needs a hobby 🙂
By the way Mr. Watts has anyone ever thought of doing something like this up for weather stations? The officials take out properly sited and leave in the bad so do you know of anyone with ideas on setting up a volunteer bunch of properly sited weather stations?
I bought a cheap Geiger counter as a Christmas present for myself last year from these people: http://www.unitednuclear.com/ It only sees beta and gamma, but so what? You have to inhale an alpha emitter for it to be dangerous, as human skin stops alphas. They are sold out also, and claim to be getting more stock in mid April. The audible clicks give good CPM readings and the meter face seems reasonably well calibrated in uSv/Hr and mR/hr. I’m currently sitting in Morro Bay a few miles north of the Diablo Canyon reactors and am getting less than 20 CPM. That’s low and boring.
Using the methods of Hansenolgy for temperature stations, I would expect the nuclear alarmists to install radiation detectors beside banana import warehouses.
Wow, I like the concept of the g-counter, it’s like most devilish clever way to to real-time monitoring map the whereabouts of Gore at all times. 0_O
But of course if he should stop eating bananas . . .
Just a note. Probably inconsequential, but the US map shows not only nuclear facilities, but corporate offices. For example the corporate offices of the Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corporation are in Wichita, KS while the actual plant is located in Burlington, KS. Same with the NPPD offices in Lincoln, NE associated with the Cooper Nuclear station. This could over populate the map with facilities.
TRM, check the “Monitor your own climate” button at the top of the page. I haven’t heard of any effort to construct a voluntary network of these, serious weather/climate monitoring would probably require at least a Vantage Vue $355.50@ur momisugly, rather more of a commitment than the Geiger counters. Temperature monitoring alone can use the USB data loggers, which start at $59.95
CNN is now reporting that “small amounts” of Japanese radiation have been detected in San Francisco.
I guess someone there finally opened their window.
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/18/japan-quake-live-blog-nissan-monitoring-car-exports-for-radiation/?hpt=T2
High radiation levels in my kitchen. Granite countertop alert!
/sarc
Wonder how many greenies have one of those in blithe ignorance of the properties of granite?
http://hps.org/documents/Radiation_granite_countertops.pdf
I gave the site link to my local journalist, who was thrilled to get ahold of info outside of the government’s brick wall.
I was told that all the geiger counters were snapped up by Fed & Disaster agencies.
That action really stinks.
Can the areas that aren’t getting an average CPM sell radiation credits to those who do?
@ur momisugly Poptech on March 18, 2011 at 5:07 am
I had no waiting period for verification after registering. It allowed almost instant access to the database. Took me a minute or so to figure out how to navigate the website and get to the RadNet data.
I also received almost instantly two emails from CDX, one stating the password must be changed every 90 days.
I can’t keep Rad-X or Radaway in stock, says my local Vault Technician.
I love how it’s the continental USA. Nothing much north, not even Alaska? or the Aleutian Islands where reportedly radiation should be hitting by today.