Jump of background radiation in Northern California
I am monitoring radiation with a BlackCat GM-45 and saw a jump of background radiation from 40CPM to about 200+CPM at 10:45AM
Currently I still register an average of 200CPM Can someone confirm this in Berkeley?
Place CALISTOGA Ca 38 34 43N 122 34 46W elev:378Ft
Dr. Chivers, could this be
Dr. Chivers, could this be explained by the jump in Iodine and Cesium you observed in the last couple of days?
Or would that not affect the background level this much?
Most important question: would a radiation detector like able to detect radiation in rain water, or only if the isotopes are airborne?
Interesting. That jump
Interesting. That jump seems quite high for a GM counter in the open. Are you sure you did not move it to near any marble counters or granite of some type? The normal background can vary significantly so your measurements have to be in the same location and you have to make note of the variance of measurement as well. I doubt this is coming from the Fukushima fallout as we are not seeing anything close to this kind of change in the past few days. We are counting rain water from last night so we are a bit delayed in our analysis.
jump
OK my fault, I changed the normalization set-up by accident and now the reading returned to 40CPM or about 12uR/hr I'm sorry to have made myself a jack ass but I must say that I'm relieved too. Thanks for your help.
Awesome, good to know!
Awesome, good to know!
Jump
Yeah, it surprised me too. I have been recording in CPM since several days and I did not move the detector. I must say that I changed the units from cpm to uR/hr and then I got about 60 ur/Hr waiting after about 5 minutes Then I switched back to CPM and still got 200 CPM confirming the uR measure. I then changed the detector from my office to outside - Same measurement I even went to my back yard without noticing much changes. I also reset the system several times without changes in the measure