Seeing this bronze age site revealed by amateur metal detectorists, made me think what would be the result of cheap reliable radiation detectors..fir example in Fukushima where they are worried about flakes of heavy transuranics, you could offer a reward to people who found them...
...coupled to a mobile 4G phone with GPS, you could so easily map areas of radiation which would probably result in people getting a lot more used to how much there is around...
Its a good use for a system I suggested years ago, you attach a small GPS tracker and a radiation detector to the wild life and let them plot where the radiation is.
You can then workout the dose they receive and end the cr@p from the likes of harry.
what I did find this morning is that a camera CCD makes a pretty good gamma detector if you keep the visible light out.
Quite a few accounts of doing that here
I think its a conspiracy. By now you should be able to pick radiation detectors up very cheaply, yet no, you cannot. Could it be that there is in fact so much radiation around that they are frightened of a panic. When I remember the alarm clocks and watches we used to have with luminous faces and bright dots on the hours and hands, and the Trimfones with the betalite tubes, its a wonder nay of us is still here!
Brian
Yes I'd imagine they would. They used on in a camera they used to drop down near a radioactive source in a program I watched over 11 years ago and it could be seen to be speckles with dots as it got nearer. It was eventually destroyed though. Well according to the maker of the program. I think it was inside 3 mile island even after all this time.
I still say that we all should have proper calibrated detectors that can tell the difference between the various energies. I'll not ask where you got a source of Gamma rays...:-)
Brian
Sounds like the bGeigie Nano
well there isnt much demand for them, but you can get sinmething foir less than a hundred, and less than 200 will buyty you a very good one
Nope, because you can be sure that if there was, Greenpiss and CND who have their own detectors (I had a friend years ago who built one and on behalf of CND went round every UK nuclear installation - he siad they were in fact completely undetectable, apart from Sellafield) would raise a huge fuss.
In fact the conspiracy is the other way around. CND et al don't want there to be any discussion of background radiation, because their myth is that the world ex of man is a clean radiation free place and only Man puts gamma rays in the environment.
Invisible radiation is far mire scary than the routine clicks on a geiger counter.
I dont think trim phones used radium
Tritium.
From
"The luminous dial or betalight contained the mildly radioactive element tritium, which later caused some concern about safety. At one point during the 1990s the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority at Harwell was fined £5,000 by Wantage Magistrates Court for accumulating radioactive waste, having collected several thousand Trimphone luminous dials in a skip"
you think a DIY kit at $450 is cheap?
"Beta particles from tritium can penetrate only about 6.0 mm of air, and they are incapable of passing through the dead outermost layer of human skin"
REALLY dangerous huh?
is informative.
Basically it shows that tritium radiation, like americium used in smoke alarms, is so massively underwhelming in its impact its actually something you can stick in consumer products.
Indeed
They didn't - they used tritium and a fluorescent substance.
ITYM "beta radiation" :-)
Beta particles are, in fact, electrons. So the cathode of your old CRT was producing large numbers of beta particles.
They used Tritium tubes to illuminate the dial.
Quite. Unfortunately the mere mention of the words 'radiation' and 'radioactive' causes instant double incontinence in sheeple like Harry! Tritium is occasionally accidentally, sometimes deliberately, discharged from nuclear submarines when they are being re-fitted in Devonport dockyard, Plymouth, to the delight of the local press who make a big issue out of it and perpetuate the fear.
Must admit I didn't see a price, just that your post reminded me I'd seen that project on TV shortly after Fukushima.
Seems like the LND7317 GM tube is around $200, there are plenty of different interface boards for £20.
No doubt actually a solid state detector rather than a GM tube. It would be interesting to know how sensitive they are.
Sorry Brian, not true. Check out eBay.
This one would be fine for you since it "clicks" each time it detects a gamma ray photon. It should easily show the increase over natural background if you place it near an old luminous watch (say 1960 or earlier).
eBay still seems to have 1000's of NOS tubes from Bulgarian/Ukranian cold-war warehouses for under a tenner ...
Indeed they did, but personally I never found myself searching for its glow in the dark.
I suppose if one had been placed on the bedside table, it might have been easier to find when woken from your slumbers, but I'm not sure I would want to be.
Chris
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