[hackerspaces] Geiger counters

[Sean Bonner]

Anyone know anything abut geiger counters? Specifically building them?
Have some folks in Japan who are trying to get their hands on them but
failing and considering DIY options...

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[Chris Hardee]

You'll need something like this, I think:

http://www.sparkfun.com/products/8875

Not an easy part to source, I'm afraid.

[Mike Outmesguine]

I was just looking at these after the conversations here at Crash Space tonight. (for example, will there be a radiation cloud in Los Angeles in two weeks?)

The key is to get the Geiger tube. Then a kit can be built from various plans, including plans for the Arduino.

Here's a source I haven't tried yet:
http://www.electronickitsbychaneyelectronics.com/Geiger-Counters/products/122/

-Mike




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[B F]

There's another option for radiation checking, though it's not as
convenient or quantitative as a Geiger counter. I forget what it's
called, but it's a piece of gold leaf hung over a wire, inside a jar.
The wire goes through the top of the jar. Use wool and amber or some
such pair to create static electricity, touch it to the wire, and the
gold leaves spread apart -- because they have the same charge.
Radiation dissipates this charge and the gold leaves come together.

Or you could buy one of these http://gammascout.com/

[Marc Juul]

On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 9:18 PM, Chris Hardee <shaz...@gmail.com> wrote:
> You'll need something like this, I think:
> http://www.sparkfun.com/products/8875
> Not an easy part to source, I'm afraid.

Couldn't an old-fashioned smoke-detector be used as a cheap radiation
detector. Since it detects when the emitted alpha-particles are being
absorbed (by smoke), I assume you could put it in a bag, fill it up
with smoke (or something even better at absorbing) and when it stops
beeping, there is a radiation source more powerful than the built-in
alpha source. It would, of course, need calibration (and you might
want to invert when the beep is emitted).

I don't know enough to say if this is really feasible. Just an idea.

--
Marc Juul

[john arclight]

I have actually had some training on this topic, and have a pretty
good knowledge of radiation instruments.

What your friend needs is a low-range instrument, i.e. something
capable of detecting at least beta/gamma radiation from background up
to 100mRem/hr or so. The big, yellow civil defense units like the
CDV-715 are high-range detectors that will only register on very high
levels of radiation, such as the fallout from an actual nuclear
detonation.

Unless they are working around that nuclear plant, the worry is not
direct exposure to radiation, but contamination from particles of
radioactive material. Short-term exposure to high levels of radiation
can cause burns and sickness, and long-term exposure (such as from
eating contaminated food or breathing in radioactive vapors from a
steam explosion) can increase cancer risks or damage certain organs,
such as the thyroid.

Ionizing radiation comes in three major forms: gamma rays (high-energy
photons), beta (high energy electrons), and alpha (heavy particles
with two protons and two neutrons). Microwaves, radio-frequency
energy and EMI from power lines are not considered ionizing radiation
and not hazardous in the same way.

Radiation exposure can be limited in 3 ways: time (minimize the time
you are outside, for instance), distance (evacuate the immediate area)
and shielding (stay inside, put stuff between you and the source of
radiation). Gamma rays require mass to stop. Beta rays can be stopped
by thin metal, and alpha particles are actually stopped by the first
few layers of your skin. None of these types of radiation will make
you or anything else radioactive, but you can be harmed if you absorb
them into your body and they continue to decay and release radiation
at zero distance and with nothing shielding you from them,

The type of radiation that turns normal matter into radioactive
isotopes is only found inside the reactor while it's running (neutron
radiation) or in a particle accelerator.

There are several ways to detect low levels of radiation as you might
find in downwind contamination from the plant. One would be the
already-mentioned Geiger-Mueller counter. It needs a factory-made
tube with an electrode and a special quench gas sealed inside, along
with a 500-750VDC power supply. When a ray or particle of ionizing
radiation passes through the tube and intercepts a molecule of the
gas, it will ionize it and cause a spark to jump from the electrode
inside to the grounded outside, registering a "click" or count.

All of these tubes will detect Beta and Gamma rays, and some with a
thin mica window (called a "pancake" or "end window" tube) will also
detect alpha particles . A pancake G-M counter would be the gold
standard to acquire.

A serviceable alternative to the G-M tube is the ion chamber. This
uses a sealed container full of gas, but it operates at a much lower
voltage and the gas can be air. It operates on the principle that the
air inside will become more conductive and pass more current if there
is ionizing radiation passing through it. You can in fact make one
out of a soda can and some amplifier circuitry.

Unfortunately, the amount of current that flows from small amounts of
radiation is measured in units like femtoamps-nanoamps, i.e. not very
much.

Another detector that can be made at home is the electroscope that was
also mentioned above. This is the old high-school physics experiment
with the two gold leaves. You charge them up, and the rate at which
the charge leaks off (and they come back together) is proportional to
the amount of radiation present.

Here are some links that may help:

Ludlum Measurements - They sell 100% excellent, new detectors. I'd
recommend a pocket-sized detector with a panckae or end-window tube:

http://www.ludlums.com/

Homemade Ion chamber:
http://www.edcheung.com/automa/radon.htm

Homemade dosimeter:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kearny_Fallout_Meter

The best place to find discussions on radiation instruments - homemade
and otherwise:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/CDV700CLUB/

FEMA course on how to monitor radiation (free self-study online)
http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/IS/is3.asp

Arclight

On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 9:09 PM, Sean Bonner <se...@seanbonner.com> wrote:

[Matt Joyce]

From my reading on the CDV-715...

It seems as if... if you register anything with that... you have already taken a lethal dose of radiation.

[john arclight]

This is sorta true. The assumption behind the CDV-715/717/720 is that
when fallout from an A-bomb or H-bomb comes, radiation levels outside
may be thousands of REM/hr.

A percentage of people will die from a 500RAD exposure (that's REM* a
factor for the type of radiation exposed to). And people can get sick
at levels of 50-100R.

So if you were exposed to 1,000R/hr for only 10 seconds while you
checked it, that would only be 1000/3600 or 270mR. The goal of these
instruments was to help people make choices that kept their exposure
under 500R for the 2-3 weeks required for much of it to dissipate or
decay away. The tasks they expected to be performed include:

1. Measuring the levels inside your shelter to determine the safest
place for people, and the safest place for individuals most at risk,
such as pregnant women.

2. Using it to take brief measurements outside, so that you will know
when it is safe to go outside and for how long.

A separate instrument, called the CDV-700 was also made that could
detect much lower levels, down to background. This was to be used for
checking food, clothes, etc for contamination. You can sometimes find
these on eBay. I would skip the CDV-715 series unless you're worried
about bad, nuclear-capable neighbors attacking you.

Just for perspective, the levels that are permissible in a work
environment are hundreds of times less than the levels that will make
you sick, and much less than the levels documented to increase cancer
risk. And all of us are exposed to a few R every year from cosmic
rays and naturally radioactive materials.

So the risk from weapons fallout is immediate and life-threatening,
and those instruments were built to work with that risk. The risks
from the nuclear power plant accident are more long-term and require
the low-range measuring instruments.

Arclight

[asbesto]

Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 09:09:15PM -0700, Sean Bonner wrote:

> Anyone know anything abut geiger counters? Specifically building them?
> Have some folks in Japan who are trying to get their hands on them but
> failing and considering DIY options...

there's something simple here:

http://sites.google.com/site/anilandro/

ebay CAN be a good source but there's too much speculation about
russian dosimeters, they were very cheap some time ago but now
they aren't.

also some of my videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtqF36EnMjM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPtlL2S8JSo

(check my youtube channel for other weirdness)

Please don't be afraid about radioactivity. There's a lot of
disinformation about this. See the "bionerd23" youtube channel
for more information about this.

--
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[sigmounte freud]

http://clx.freeshell.org/geigercounter.html  a friends of mine , he does the counter himself , and the schematic are available on the page ( video inside too )

[killbox]

How about the sticker based instant dosimiters?

Not sure the site is legit, but there are other shops selling these,

scroll down to the Radsticker
http://www.ki4u.com/products1.php

--
Hacking it up at Quelab,
Albuquerque's First Hackerspace http://quelab.net

[The Doctor]

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On 03/16/2011 12:09 AM, Sean Bonner wrote:
> Anyone know anything abut geiger counters? Specifically building them?
> Have some folks in Japan who are trying to get their hands on them but
> failing and considering DIY options...

I have one of the USB Geiger counters from Sparkfun
(http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9848) which I'm quite pleased with.
They're a bit expensive but easy to work with; you can get one up and
running in about a minute (which usually includes installing Minicom).
The downside is that they really should be put in an enclosure of some
kind to protect everything. As for building one, I've never done so
before. Sorry.

Come to think of it, getting them shipped to Japan might prove
problematic right now.

- --

The Doctor [412/724/301/703]

PGP: 0x807B17C1 / 7960 1CDC 85C9 0B63 8D9F DD89 3BD8 FF2B 807B 17C1
WWW: http://drwho.virtadpt.net/

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[Katie Bechtold]

On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 5:22 PM, The Doctor <dr...@virtadpt.net> wrote:
> Come to think of it, getting them shipped to Japan might prove
> problematic right now.

Depends where in Japan you're shipping them to. My understanding is
that outside of the Tōhoku region, postal services are not
particularly disrupted.

--
Katie      http://about.me/katiebechtold

[tetsu yatsu]

Surprised no one sent this in yet, as it's from HackADay:


http://hackaday.com/2011/03/17/quick-and-dirty-film-dosimeter/

[B F]

The objections to that use of film as dosimeter seem convincing. But
there are other links in the discussion that might be interesting to
follow.

[Gregory McGuire]

So, on March 26th, NESIT (http://www.nesit.net/ http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/NESIT), Alpha One Labs (http://www.alphaonelabs.com, http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Alpha_One_Labs), Beta Two Labs (http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Beta_Two_Labs http://www.betatwolabs.com), and Syracuse Innovators Guild, (http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Syracuse_Innovators_Guild http://www.sig315.org) will be partaking in a Multi-Hackerspace LAN party, http://www.hackerspaces.org/LAN_Party.  We will be playing a lot of different games and would like to invite other groups to participate if they want to.  More information can be found on the hackerspaces.org wiki at, http://www.hackerspaces.org/LAN_Party. I know that NESIT is currently hosting an Open Arena Death Match server as well as a Minecraft Server, BetaTwo is working on a Open Arena Server as well, and SIG is looking at a Glest and/or Armagetron server.  If anyone has any questions or comments, feel free to respond to this email

Thanks!

--Greg from NESIT--    

[Greg McGuire]

I'm sorry, the link for the LAN Party wiki page should be, http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/LAN_Party.  That's my mistake.

--Greg--

[Deech]

Another good place to ask would be CDV70...@yahoogroups.com

It's a group I got interested in when I got my Royal Scintillator gamma detector. Not just about the CDV, the group has a lot of detector and radiation enthusiasts and a fair number of professionals on it as well.

I'll pose the question above and report back what they say.

-Deech
 

[Ron Bean]

Interesting comments over at SeeedStudio:

http://www.seeedstudio.com/blog/2011/03/16/radiation-detector-help-needed/#comments

[Theron Trowbridge]

We were just talking about that!

http://www.geigercounters.com/Monitor4Kit.htm

-Theron

^

On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 9:09 PM, Sean Bonner <se...@seanbonner.com> wrote:

[Geoff Shively]

Geiger Counter build night!

All the workers at Fukushima were sent home, even the Fuku 50- there
is apparently steady stream of white smoke coming out of reactor 3 and
a fire at 4 in the spent fuel pool. Sounds pretty fubar - the winds
are shifting offshore again- anderson cooper got the hell outa there-
and should we be concerned?

The distributed crowdsourced web 3.0 Geiger counter thing on boing
boing is badass- the map wasnt working for me earlier- but try here-
http://www.boingboing.net/2011/03/15/as-japan-nuclear-fea.html

[asbesto]

Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 09:53:23PM -0700, Geoff Shively wrote:

> is apparently steady stream of white smoke coming out of reactor 3 and
> a fire at 4 in the spent fuel pool. Sounds pretty fubar - the winds
> are shifting offshore again- anderson cooper got the hell outa there-
> and should we be concerned?

I have different news here, from NHK World TV they say that they
don't know where the smoke come from (and no, no fire in the
news) and the radiation level dropped down in a few hours so
they are back working there...

please we've to avoid to create fear, there' s nothing to fear
about this incident, they're working well doing everything has
to be done.

Info here:

http://mitnse.com/

http://iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html

http://www.nkh.or.jp/english (streaming on ustream also)

Info about tokyo:

http://www.allianceport.jp/labs/radiationmonitor/

quite low measures, lower than what I can measure here in
Sicilia with my instruments (from 3 to 20 uSv/h, that's the
normal background level)

--
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_______________________________________________

[Jaromil]

On Wed, 16 Mar 2011, asbesto wrote:
>
> Please don't be afraid about radioactivity. There's a lot of
> disinformation about this. See the "bionerd23" youtube channel
> for more information about this.

this is true, esp. if we believe that it wasn't the exposure to
radiations that made you become what you are
http://lab.dyne.org/IlPresidente

BTW 250$ is RLY TOO MUCH for a geiger counter.
does that version includes also a windozz licenzz!?

[asbesto]

Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 09:19:01PM -0700, Theron Trowbridge wrote:

> We were just talking about that!
>
> http://www.geigercounters.com/Monitor4Kit.htm

215$ !!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?

o_O

does ANYONE had a look at the internet site I posted some days
ago? WAKE UP PEOPLE

http://sites.google.com/site/anilandro/04010-geiger-01

http://sites.google.com/site/anilandro/04012-geiger-an-2

and here I found some VERY ULTRA SIMPLE CIRCUITS for radiation
detection:

http://www.techlib.com/science/ion.html

those are definitively an useful resource to build something
WORKING out of the trash box in your (my? :) lab

;)

--
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_______________________________________________

[Deech]

I got some responses off the CDV700 list.

Mainly they just had an argument over whether or not it was ok for untrained folks to have detectors.

However, this is a good link that came out of the conversation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kearny_Fallout_Meter

the Kearny Fallout Meter or KFM is an expedient radiation meter designed to be able to be constructed immediately before or during a nuclear attack by someone with a normal mechanical ability and from common household items.

I think this was what was referenced before, but without actual build instructions.

-=Deech

[Jaromil]

On Thu, 31 Mar 2011, Deech wrote:

> I got some responses off the CDV700 list.

ACK.

in the meanthime Asbesto went drinking water from rainpipes in Italy
while the radioactive cloud was said to be over it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MFvxKzD2v8

WARNING: this is EXTREMELY FUNNY. DON'T DO IT.

he also does some good measuring of the water radioactivity

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDrFyYeNpz8

ciao

--
jaromil, dyne.org developer, http://jaromil.dyne.org
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[Justis Peters]

Some related coverage from NPR:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/03/24/134823329/citizen-scientists-crowdsource-radiation-measurements-in-japan

Kind regards,
Justis

[Jaap Vermaas]

On 04/07/2011 12:39 PM, Jaromil wrote:
> On Thu, 31 Mar 2011, Deech wrote:
>
>> I got some responses off the CDV700 list.
>
> ACK.
>
> in the meanthime Asbesto went drinking water from rainpipes in Italy
> while the radioactive cloud was said to be over it.
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MFvxKzD2v8
>
> WARNING: this is EXTREMELY FUNNY. DON'T DO IT.
>
> he also does some good measuring of the water radioactivity
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDrFyYeNpz8
>

He Jaromil,

The hackerspaces list is quite international, there's even some people
subscribed who do not speak Italian.

So please... can you subtitle these videos for us?

> ciao
>
Dikke doei!

Jaap
--
tuxic.nl