I thought the rainwater wouldn't be carrying radiation from Fukushima anymore since we are past the big explosions. Not so according to this guys measurements in St. Louis.
Radiation still showing up in the rain as of May 19th 2011
The Gathering Spot is a PEERS empowerment website
"Dedicated to the greatest good of all who share our beautiful world"
Thanks for the links Noa, this all seems to be so confusing, with different unit measurements for radiation and dose. The map of America lists cpm, I assume that's curries per minute? How about the 140 you have in France, do you know which unit measurement that is?
I thought America was higher than Europe due to all the nuclear tests - this information is difficult to sort out.
Wendy
"Understanding The Radioactivity At Fukushima" - A Physics And Engineering Perspective
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/understanding-radioactivity-fukushima-physics-and-engineering-perspective
Linked below is a site that updates radiation readings in the US every minute. If someone has come across similar online tools, I'd like to hear about them.
http://radiationnetwork.com/
Crowd-sourced realtime radiation monitoring in Japan
http://community.pachube.com/node/611
http://www.woweather.com/weather/news/fukushima?LANG=us&VAR=hysplitheight
The radiation flow, forecast and shown by these several models... tells the tale of the isotopes coming our way... .. it will be up to you to decide if you should go outside during the time these clouds are over the USA, Canada, and Mexico...
radiation forecasting links:
http://www.woweather.com/weather/news/fukushima?LANG=us&VAR=webcam&SA...
jet stream forecasting
http://squall.sfsu.edu/crws/jetstream.html
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/CT/animate.arctic.color.0.html
http://nowcoast.noaa.gov/
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/srh/tropicalwx/satpix/nwpac_ir4_loop.php
http://www.stormsurfing.com/cgi/display_alt.cgi?a=glob_250
http://www.woweather.com/weather/news/fukushima?LANG=us&VAR=niluhemis131&
Everything you need to know about radiation http://www.thebestdayever.com/news/podcast/podcast-64-everything-you-need-to-know-about-radiation/
Here in France, my region is at 140 as of 5/23/11. No one I know is talking about it or seems to be concerned. Coastal regions have lower radiation levels. The map of Central Europe, above Italy, is completed saturated! ~ Noa
I'm confused about the measurements, too. This is the site I visited: http://eurdep.jrc.ec.europa.eu/Basic/Pages/Public/Home/Default.aspx The units used for France are in Bq/m3 and nSv/h, whatever that means. The range on the chart is 100 - 400. There is more green on the map today (200) than blue (100) compared to when I checked it yesterday.
http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/
Since the inception of the nuclear crisis in Japan, the Nuclear Engineering Department faculty have been closely monitoring the situation. We have been collaborating with our colleagues from Japan, particularly from the University of Tokyo, to obtain accurate information and provide technical support. The faculty will continue to provide technical expertise and information to news media and the government during this crisis. Below are some videos of the recent press interviews that our faculty gave over the last few days.
Hi Noa-
Here's from a pdf I downloaded from one of your links:
1 curie=37 Billion decays per second
1 seivert is a dose measurement = .05B (I assume this means billion?) U 238 decays or 10B of Cs decays per gram of body weight.
So I'm assuming Bq/m3 is Bequerels per cubic meter (a background radiation reading) and nSv/h is a nanno Seivert per hour (a dose reading)
My detector measures cpm which I found out is counts per minute. I assume that 60 cpm would be equal to 1 Bq.
So here at my computer where I obviously spend a ton of time, I'm reading about 40 cpm - a little higher than is typically displayed for America at the radiation network.
I guess my next task is to find out what typcal background radiation measurements are.
Wendy
More usable info.:
My background radiation in my house here in central Massachusetts is 0.012 mR/hr or 105 mR/yr which is a rough equivalent to rems/yr.
Background radiation in America is typically listed as 300 rems/yr.
My measurement sounds a bit low but considering it's from inside my house I think it sounds realistic. Over the next few days I'll take more measurements outside, checking the rainwater, etc. and post.
Side note:
A few years ago I bought a radioactive necklace (hormesis), hoping it might help my asthma. I wore it for a week or so and noticed that I could really feel heat coming from it and no help for my asthma so then I took it off. I kind of assumed I got ripped off but my radiation dectector clicked like crazy near it. This is what I bought.
Wendy