Anyone have a dosimeter?

[Keigan]

Many years ago I bought a dosimeter as I was investing in gear, mine is a Gamma-Scout Alert.

I lived in Colorado Springs CO when Fukushima blew its top, one detonation and one deflagration. About six days later the background radiation in CO jumped 4x as it rained, gone a few days later. It was kind of cool to be in the know, to know exactly what was going on in my environment.

Now the Gamma-Scout sits in the window sill of the kitchen window, so I read the background radiation level everyday just to know.

We played with a piece of uranium ore, makes you think twice about camping out on the ground in CO.

 

[pjcnet]

I haven't got a dosimeter, but when I was still still at school I remember being in the physics lab shortly after the Chernobyl disaster (26th April 1986). I watched a Geiger counter reading increase significantly as the fall out cloud crossed the UK, but what was probably most disturbing is despite reducing afterwards, background radiation remained noticeably higher permanently even weeks later. The disaster has caused background radiation levels across the whole planet to be slightly increased for literally thousands of years and so does nuclear testing Etc, it all adds up towards damaging our planet. People may say that the radiation was and is within "safe" limits in the UK even when it went to around 5 times normal in some areas, but it's a fact that there is no safe level of radiation and all radiation is a risk towards health. In other words, the higher the radiation, the greater the risk to your health, but even a small amount of radiation still poses a low risk. 1.25 times a low radiation level may still be considered as insignificant and even 5 times may be considered okay, but it will still cause a higher level of cancer than the original low level and no-one truly knows how many more cases of cancer Chernobyl caused and is in fact still causing even in distant countries.

 

[Judge]

I have some friends that are proponents of nuclear energy, but I am of the opinion that despite the benefits of it being renewable, one mishap and many people can die. It is one of those things that they can't fully control and really don't have a complete understanding of.

My father did his masters (civil/sanitary engineering) thesis on the problems of storing nuclear waste in the early 50s.

His professors loved it. However his employer and tuition benefactor, the US Navy hated it.

Luckily Dad had no intention of serving in Admiral Rickover's nuclear navy. He went directly into the CEC and Seabees. Problem solved.