For staying safe you want high max range and energy-compensated dose response. No ultra cheap devices offer that, mine is the closest thing on the low end of price, but consider me biased... If anyone finds something to contradict that feel free to share, because it would be new info to me. Then there is the second hand market, for example mrad 113 is a good device that can sometimes be had for a reasonable price, probably there are other pro grade dosimeters on ebay for a reasonable price but I don't know follow that market closely.
I am not certain but this tube looks like an M4011 which typically measures up to 1 mSv/hr for a reference Cs-137 source. Pretty low maximum level, not suitable for emergencies.
tl;dr not useful. To make a long story short, max range is very important and these cheap tubes saturate easily, and they don't give energy-corrected dose rate. They also cannot do gamma spec (isotope identification), but that is not needed for a fallout scenario because fallout contains basically every isotope under the sun, no need to do any gamma spec. I have a very long detailed video about this topic on my youtube channel BetterGeiger
I gave a more detailed comment already, but price/performance is not a simple two axis thing. No consumer grade gamma spec device measures high dose rate which is needed for emergency use. Depending on the intended use case something lower cost than radiacode might make sense. For example the radiacode 110 ($400) has the same volume and type of scintillator, with very high sensitivity, as the better geiger S2L ($200), so both are good for handheld search for radioactive objects, but S2L has something like 30x higher maximum dose rate range which makes it more capable in emergencies, whereas the 110 has Bluetooth, mapping, and gamma spec... Which are very fun for hobbyist but have little true "practical" real world value. Different interests and different budgets would point people in different directions.
Yeah, even in the non-consumer grade space, you're still likely to want to include something like a calibrated GM tube in the lineup, for measuring dose after the scintillators are saturated.
Yes exactly, often a small energy compensated GM tube that is not very sensitive but can handle very high radiation levels is included in the same device as a pro detector with a fancy scintillator.
Cool project! My business is Better Geiger (www.bettergeiger.com), I design and sell radiation detectors. I just hope people keep in mind the capabilities and limitations of those simple Geiger tubes. Radon was mentioned on the project website, yes technically radon decay products are detectable but pracfically a Geiger tube is reacting only to terrestrial, cosmic, and other sources of radiation, not anything to do with radon. Measuring radon generally requires a dedicated device (I recommend ecosense, at least until I get around to designing one). You correctly noted that such a tube can't accurately measure dose, that's because it is not energy compensated, so usually such a tube has a count to dose conversion factor for Cs-137 that will cause major overestimation in realistic scenarios. Those cheap tubes of that type also saturates easily in radiation fields that are really hazardous, making it fairly useless in an emergency situation. That is the main distinguishing feature of my products, high range and energy compensated. I have put out some YouTube videos that go into more detail about radiation dose, fallout and how to reduce risks, etc. I've given a lot of thought to doing a project like this with a scintillator, but I don't think the demand is there for me to do it before a lot of other ideas I have... When a cheapo standalone Geiger tube device can be had for $50, my products with scintillator go for $150 or $200 for the very high sensitivity version, then for $250-600 there are a few gamma spec products like radiacode, raysid, and radview with varying other features that are fun for hobbyists (though be aware none of those go to high dose rate range). For hackability mine offers access to the digital and analog outputs, but it's not really made for gamma spec so the spectrum quality is poor, but it can be a fun way to play. I've given a lot of thought to something designed more for DIY people, but in my experience very few people actually want that, most just want plug and play, and the ones that do request it usually don't even follow through. I've only communicated with a couple people that actually pulled a spec from a better geiger. Maybe that would be different if I designed a device specifically for DIY, something really small with simple serial comm output or something like that... Maybe some day.
I love the idea of using the tube and measurements as a random number generator! However, please treat the whole category of homemade devices to measure/detect "bad shit" as novelty and nothing else. If you are actually concerned enough to really measure/detect harmful materials, buy the proper devices. Learn how to calibrate and how to use them properly. The last thing our 911 system needs are people calling with aliexpress radiation detectors going off in a cancer center.
I would really like to have a geiger counter that I can put on the wall and connect to Zigbee/Z-Wave/WiFi and tie into Home Assistant. I've considered building one with the cheaper tube and ESP32, but I'm surprised that for Radon and radiation, it seems like something like AirGradient, but for radioactivity, doesn't exist.
* direct alpha detection via wet film + process (slow, and day turnover physical processing) OR optical scintillation of filtered air, or
* stochastic gamma detection via a full spectrum and a formula to identify and divide out main peaks and daughter peaks of overlapping common radiometric decay (Uranium, Potassium, Thorium) to guesstimate the radon
I did this with radiacode and that library. I had chatgpt put together a quick little server that pushes from cdump/radiacode into MQTT for home assistant. I'd be happy to release it if there's interest.
I am not aware of anything that can connect to home assistant like that. It is definitely missing from the market and something I would like to make eventually, but too many other projects to finish first.
I use an Aranet radiation sensor[0] that ties in nicely with home assistant. It was more of a fun purchase, and excuse my lack of radiation knowledge, but is it same as those geiger counters or something a big different, I assumed it's similar but slower? They also have other sensors for Radon, CO2, etc
Oh I didn't realize that worked with home assistant. It's a little different than a Geiger tube, that device uses a PIN diode and reacts to radiation interactions with the diode itself. Accuracy isn't great for dose but probably decent enough. Sensitivity is very very low, takes a while to get a reading. In theory it should be able to handle high dose rate levels but the spec sheet says it only measures to 1 mSv/hr which is pretty low, I don't know why. Their radon sensor is a different sensor tech, and CO2 and such is standard stuff pretty easy to implement.
> Radon was mentioned on the project website, yes technically radon decay products are detectable but pracfically a Geiger tube is reacting only to terrestrial, cosmic, and other sources of radiation, not anything to do with radon.
To measure radon (say in a cellar), you'd typically take some dust filter or filter foam, attach it to a fan and circulate the cellar air through the filter, then the radioactive dust collects in the filter, and one can measure higher doses more easily.
If you want to actually measure radon concentration quantitatively what you are describing is not the way. Typically devices simply measure alpha count rates coming from air, radon diffuses very effectively and no filtering or extra flow is necessary. Your technique would show "hey look there is a little bit of something radioactive here" but would be very difficult to turn into a concentration without a lot of extra complicated steps.
The relevance of the fan with filter is that it is analogous to your lungs which can also trap radioactive particles, like radon, causing say lung cancer.
Yes, radon is a gas. Why did you bring this up? Were you implying that dust collection couldn't work? I can see why you might think that if you didn't understand that Radon is radioactive and has a short half-life (3.8 days).
> Most short term radon tests will use activated charcoal to absorb the radon gas in the air. Various short terms tests kits will include some type container filled with activated charcoal, usually perforated or screened and has a filter to keep out radon decay products. At the end of testing, the absorber is resealed and returned to the vendor for processing and evaluation.
> When radon undergoes radioactive breakdown, it decays into other radioactive elements called radon daughters (or progeny). Radon daughters are solids, not gases, and stick to surfaces such as dust particles in the air. Dust particles carrying radon daughters can move with air.
Random question for you in the biz: where can I get a muon detector setup? I just can't find them anywhere and would love to gain access to the extraterrestrial and solar weather particle environment.
I really want to make one to sell but too many other projects. The last time I saw them for sale was through the UKRAA but they seem to be out of stock for a while. You might be able to cobble one together with ebay stuff and online guides but it would be a struggle. Sorry I don't have a better answer.
You are right max range is important for some applications, and most cheap Geiger counters saturate very easily (that two tube device you mentioned being a notable exception). Even still it is not great to refer to them as dosimeters because measuring dose with a low cost Geiger counter is risky at best. That's because they are calibrated to Cs-137. Some so-called energy-compensated Geiger tubes exist and give more accurate dose information, but they are not used in consumer-grade devices (or at least none that I've seen, and I own a ton and constantly study the market). Also Geiger tubes can pick up a lot of beta, and in that case it will dramatically overestimate dose because beta should be blocked in order to get an accurate dose reading, and none of the usual suspects do that. Even if beta is blocked, dose is often strongly overestimated due to the lack of energy-compensation I mentioned. That's one of the reasons I developed the Better Geiger S-1, to have an accurate and fool-proof high range dosimeter at a consumer-friendly price point ($149).
It is a myth that radon collects in "low points", concentrations are low and it diffuses as the molecules bounce around. However, as you said radon is entering into those areas primarily, which means it will naturally be higher in those areas. Secondly basements often have poor ventilation, which is not to say that the radon cannot otherwise escape, but ventilation can disperse it much more rapidly than diffusion.
I think the core of the explanation given is correct but some of the adjacent details need adjustment. The important part is:
"Clothes dryers are very effective at making statically charged surfaces. (Dryer sheets help.) So when radon and its temporary decay products are blown through the dryer, electrically-polarized molecules tend to be attracted to the charged surfaces"
What that commenter misses is that nearly all hobbyist grade detectors (Geiger tubes) are not sensitive to alpha but they are highly sensitive to beta and a little sensitivity to gamma. However, any thin solid will block beta, so they would need the Geiger tube to be very near the radiation emitting material to pick up the beta. In other words, if they're just waving the detector around they're probably just catching the gamma.
The radon in the air decays into various progeny, and by the time it reaches the dryer that will be to some extent in equilibrium, so several isotopes, including gamma emitters, will be present in the mix. Therefore I'm not surprised the detector reads a tiny bit of that.
Why it dissipates is probably not a decay thing but rather the accumulated material gradually diffusing away from the filter or whatever after the dryer is turned off and no longer actively accumulating radon.
This could be tested by putting a detector right next to the filter to see how much beta it picks up. I've basically done that with a home air filter:
That's with the detector I make and sell which is primarily sensitive to gamma, which is why I could register a reading through the plastic container, even a couple days after preparing the test. When I used a pancake style detector sensitive to alpha and beta, directly against the exposed filter, the detector reacted much more strongly... But the Better Geiger S-1 gives an accurate dose reading, the Geiger tube or pancake probe will dramatically overestimate dose in that scenario, which can cause undue concern... In reality it's pretty harmless levels of radiation. :)
> hobbyist grade detectors (Geiger tubes) are not sensitive to alpha but they are highly sensitive to beta and a little sensitivity to gamma.
This was part of the reason why it took so long to discover the cause of Alexander Litvinenko's death by Polonium-210 poisoning. Doctors (and later detectives) had suspected some form of radiation poisoning, but the early tests used Geiger counters and came back negative. But Po-210 decays almost exclusively by emitting an alpha particle which is not detectable by Geiger counters. (And it also means it's not very dangerous outside the body but becomes extremely toxic if ingested.)
Yes, and even if you have a high-end alpha detector, ingested radioactive material cannot be detected externally if it's only emitting alpha. One would need to take a blood sample or something like that and do more complicated tests.
Yes, this is why the idea to use Po-210 was a stroke of (evil) genius. Because of its unique decay profile it is extremely hard to detect. The FSB agents who did this could obtain a small but lethal dose of Po-210 in Russia and then carry it across borders dissolved in a vial of water. In that state it is not dangerous, so the agents had little risk to themselves by carrying it. And it is also undetectable by border security, even if they were monitoring for radiation.
> The UK Health Protection Agency, which is advising authorities on technical aspects of the case, characterises the contamination in all 12 cases as “not significant enough to result in any illness in the short term,” while “any increased risk in the long term is likely to be very small.”
It would probably just appear as faint noise, and then only if it happened to be at wavelengths that the sensors were tuned to detect, and which the machine's signal processors weren't trying to ignore, and if the image processing was designed to draw attention to it.
His symptoms were consistent with radiation poisoning and because he was a high profile dissident his case attracted enough attention that the Atomic Weapons Establishment tested his blood and urine.
They performed gamma ray spectroscopy but did not discover any strong signals, except for a very small spike at 803 keV. Some of the scientists were talking about the case and they were overheard by an older scientist who had worked on the UK's atomic weapons program back in the 50s. The early bombs relied on Po-210 and he recognized that 803 keV line as being characteristic of Po-210. Although the decay is almost exclusively via alpha particles, a very small fraction of decays happen via emission of a gamma ray at 803 keV.
Once they had the connection to Po-210 it was straightforward to test for its presence in his body.
> except for a very small spike at 803 keV. Some of the scientists were talking about the case and they were overheard by an older scientist who had worked on the UK's atomic weapons program back in the 50s. The early bombs relied on Po-210 and he recognized that 803 keV line as being characteristic of Po-210
I don't understand. So professionals from the AWE tried to identify the measured radiation lines from memory(?!), instead of consulting a publicly available database of spectral & decay lines? It's been a while since I've done any spectral analysis but I used to use ie.lbl.gov a lot (seems offline unfortunately) and they had a search function[0] that allowed you to filter their entire database of isotopes and decay chains by whatever line you were looking for.
Man, so glad I decided to finally click on the comments after seeing the article at the top of hn most the day - we don’t have radon where I live (I don’t think?) so I figured the dryer thing wasn’t applicable to me.
But for the vast majority of my life, I’ve always wanted a Geiger counter, and once they were cheap and readily available on Amazon, I was just about to pull the trigger. And then Fukushima happened a week later and sent prices into the stratosphere.
A few times recently I idly looked at the ones on Amazon but never got around to it because I couldn’t tell which were junky crap and which were somewhat more expensive junky crap.
But very cool to see a knowledgeable manufacturer explaining his product in a highly relevant comment thread. Finally, the radiation detector for me!
There’s a former 12 year old kid out there who still remembers the Geiger counter exhibit from taking a pre-9/11 NPP tour who’s going to be very excited for something coming in the mail in the next week or two.
>What that commenter misses is that nearly all hobbyist grade detectors (Geiger tubes) are not sensitive to alpha
from the original post:
"If your Geiger counter is actually detecting radiation, it's almost certainly the half-hour lead and bismuth. "
If you look at the table he provided lead and bismuth are beta decay. It is likely he is specifying that on the fact that most home geiger counters only detect beta and gamma not alpha.
Could also be a happy accident though. Half an hour is short enough that the amount of radiation emitted is pretty high, but long enough that it hasn't pretty much all decayed by the time you try to measure it.
Even though bananas are famously radioactive, it's very low activity and I don't know that a regular detector could pick up the emissions from a single banana. You'd probably need a truck full of them.
It's interior. No ventilation. I guess it's ionizing the air and bringing radioactive dust particles to the whole room. The radiation level is still very low so I'm not worried.
Thank you! Most people don't need one (and hopefully it stays that way) but I still think it's a fun and educational device. If nothing else it's a conversation piece. :)
Hey, that's a pretty slick package (and price point). I looked through bettergeiger.com and read the discussion about the difference between GM tubes vs scintillators, but never saw an indication of what material you're using. Would be useful information for those of us thinking of upgrading from an SBM-20.
I'm sorry to say that some of the sensor design details, including material and geometry, are not shared. That was a critical optimization process during the design phase (tricky balancing act between cost and performance) and I want to slow down any copy-cat devices. However in terms of performance I am pretty open and detailed about how the device actually behaves:
Another metric some people like is CPM/[uSv/hr] when exposed to Cs-137 (662 keV). That number is about 415, whereas cheapo Geigers can be as low as 10, and decent consumer-grade Geiger counters are usually around 120. This number gives a decent idea about relative X-ray/gamma sensitivity of those devices.
I’m not familiar with Geiger counter design/specs but would the considerable static electricity send some electrons into the detector and cause a false positive beta hit?
Beta particles are basically energetic electrons flying around, yes, but for a Geiger counter to detect them they have to be quite energetic in order to penetrate the Geiger tube itself (detection occurs essentially inside the tube, in the gas)... So I doubt that static field is generating electrons anywhere near that energy needed to be detected by a Geiger tube.
Alpha has the shortest range and can be blocked by a piece of paper. Alpha radiation consists of protons.
Gamma goes through most things and has the highest range. Gamma consists of electro magnetic radiation.
Beta is somewhere in the middle. It consists of electrons.
All are of concern, but Alfa is mainly of concern if ingested or inhaled. This is because all the radiation will be absorbed by your body, while most gamma would just escape. Gamma is of more concern outside the body, due to its reach.
I may remember some details wrong. I last learned about this in school a decade ago.
Radiation detection is my specialty. This source is Cs-137, few hundred mCi. It's easy to detect within a few seconds at distances of a few tens of meters or more with professional detection equipment if there is direct line of sight.
If it was knocked off the road, though, the question will be if it fell into a crack or other such place because then the radiation is somewhat shielded and it would take much more measuring time to identify it.
I suspect if a few passes with vehicle-mounted detectors don't find it then some drones with detectors traveling along the sides of the road would be a good next step. If a critter moved it or ate it then it's probably gone forever. At a distance of 1 meter the dose rate from that source is already not extremely hazardous unless a person were exposed for an extended period of time (like a full day or two). Getting closer, like putting it directly against your torso, would mean serious health effects in a matter of minutes.
The biggest problem is going to be if it got embedded in a tire. The hope is that it’s “just on the side of the road”. But there’s a very real possibility that this could get picked up by someone’s car, wedged into the tire tread, and sit in their garage slowly exposing them and/or their family if the garage is used for anything else. Or any other car related exposure scenarios such as part time rideshare driver or work vehicles. And it could spend some time
Slowly getting its surface chipped and abraded by regular driving wear, spreading out the risk… which could be good or bad depending on how large the pieces are.
The Australian Government should urge all those who travelled that road after the item was lost to inspect the tyres of their car and possibly the garage.
Thats a horror story, but the actual horror is society picking not up on this until its too late for alot of lifes. This is one of the incidents, that a centralized health system with data mining could have picked up easily.
Both of those stories are from the 80s, when hard drives were the size of washing machines and an internet connection was an unlikely thing to have outside the military and larger scientific institutions (e.g., CERN).
I read the Wikipedia article... it's scary and sadly a number of people died or were injured... but then I think about something like the Covid pandemic and, compared to that, the number of deaths from radioactive sources like this basically round to zero.
If people are strongly affected by the radiation, then it's probably not going to be that long until the problem is tracked down and dealt with.
I suppose the worst case scenario would be if the radiation was in a place where it wasn't affecting people as acutely and lots of people were passing nearby it, such that the existence of the radiation wouldn't be as obvious or as easy to track down.
Yes, I recommend mine ;) ... the "Better Geiger S-1"
In the budget price range (~$150 and under) my detector, which uses a solid scintillator, and a traditional Geiger tube based device are really the only options worth considering.
The pros of my detector are high range (max 20 mSv/hr vs typically 1 mSv/hr for common Geiger tubes), roughly 3x higher X-ray/gamma sensitivity, and automatic energy-correction of dose rate for better accuracy in realistic scenarios. I also think the design is pretty robust and user-friendly, people seem to like it.
A traditional Geiger tube has some pros also. The only ones worth getting in the budget range, in my opinion, are the GQ GMC type (there are variants but most are basically the same). They are a little cheaper and they have more bells and whistles like data logging. Another pro is that they have higher beta sensitivity, but that's a con also. Antiques like uranium glass and fiestaware are primarily low energy beta emitters so my detector reacts very weakly but a Geiger tube reacts very strongly. That's a con also, though, because when measuring dose you should NOT measure beta, so it means traditional Geiger tubes dramatically overestimate dose rate when they are exposed to beta (a common mistake among beginners).
Just please don't buy any of the super cheap import detectors that have suddenly appeared on the market in the last year or so, they are all terrible.
At higher prices (~$400 and up) there are a lot of different options with pros and cons, it just depends what the intended applications of the detector are.
Unfortunately not yet. Right now I am struggling to keep up with demand but when I have some more units on hand I'll probably try to set up Amazon fulfillment in some countries in Europe.
You can get a detector/dosimeter on Amazon in the $50ish range. I got one a while back and verified it works for increased background radiation at 30,000 feet in a plane and separately with an alpha radiation source. The interesting thing is if you leave it on the background radiation sometimes just spikes for no apparent reason. Maybe something like a cosmic ray hitting the sensor every once in a while?
The one I got is on Amazon as "Geiger Counter Nuclear Radiation Detector, Professional High Accuracy Radioactive Detector Meter Beta Gamma X Ray Data Tester Marble Dosimeter".
SafeCast? https://safecast.org/ - they have a map, too, but it's a mostly-boring "normal background" with a couple of "normal slightly elevated background" where local geology matters.
If a critter moved it or ate it then it's probably gone forever. At a distance of 1 meter the dose rate from that source is already not extremely hazardous unless a person were exposed for an extended period of time (like a full day or two). Getting closer, like putting it directly against your torso, would mean serious health effects in a matter of minutes.
Bit of contradiction in your statement here? If putting it against your torso would mean serious health effects in minutes, how would a critter "eat" it and get more than a few meters away?
Not op, or an expert on radiation poisoning, but, one can receive a lethal dose of radiation in an instant (and be condemned to certain death) but not die for weeks.
Credentials: I've read about the demon core[0] and watched Chernobyl on HBO.
The family was just clueless and it would have been the job of the doctors to tell them the truth. But they wanted to use the rare case for some scientific glory.
Wikipedia says his wife wanted him to see the year 2000. I suspect doctors just followed family orders, not much glory in keeping an almost-corpse alive.
Ah, doctor is a trained professional, who is forced to uphold the truth and stand up as the agent of reason against delusional personal wishes of humans in denial. You can not see the year 2000 with shredded dna. They knew, they did not insist, they created the ilusion of possible cure and healing for what was essentially a hospice cure.
They created a situation, were they applied cures that could not work to a patient that wanted to die. And they knew. Let those monsters not be hidden behind the cluelessness of the family.
Clinging to life at all costs, until there is nothing left, but a heap of hellish pain and machines, a good doctor will, should & must prevent this.
> If putting it against your torso would mean serious health effects in minutes, how would a critter "eat" it and get more than a few meters away?
a) by moving more than 1 meter per minute.
b) You should not read "serious health effects" as "instant death" where radiation is concerned. There is usually a lag time between radiation exposure and consequences. At low doses, this is "likely cancer, years later". But I think you'd still call that "serious health effects" if it happened to you.
At higher doses the consequences are "radiation sickness, days or hours later", which is plenty of time to disperse the source.
Do you think animals can only move a meter per minute!??
First of all, this part is not necessarily common knowledge but serious health effects does not mean incapacitated, and in the case of radiation it usually means effects that come on in the days/weeks following exposure, at least for humans. Animals can have different radio-sensitivity.
Regardless of that, a critter could easily travel a few hundred meters or more in a matter of minutes!! The search area then grows enormously. Total game changer.
You'd pretty much start with a local radiometric survey company (there are a few in Perth) using a 50 litre doped sodium iodide cyrstal pack (a bit heavy for a drone) and scintillation counters in a crop duster flying at 40 m ground clearence dead centre down the road at 70 m/sec for the full 1,400 km road length.
Post process the 256 value gamma spectrum, correcting for cosmic, aircraft signature, remove the mean average W.Australia backround signature, run a full rolling NASVD to peak sharpen and look for 32 and 662 kev twin peaks.
Then you'd start with the local area ground search.
Given the lapsed time already there's a good chance the slug in question was either magpie'd on site or has been picked up in a tire and gone off route.
If you read all that and still feel game for more there's some mad bastard willing to tolerate PhD candidates that want to mix geology and big radiometric data, he even reckons (and I quote):
The integration of these different lines of research has the potential to improve greatly our ability to extract geological information from radiometric datasets for exploration purposes.
It’s called Bayesian Search Theory, and is even more interesting when you consider that not finding it at a given location gives you information about where it might or might not be.
I wonder if analog dosimeters might be a better way to narrow down the search area more cheaply and quicker to set-up. Fly or drive a run. Check dosimeter.
Dunno if there's enough energy expected to set it off at the expected speeds travelled. Obviously they don't go "ding ding ding". Might find some spurious beta-radiation sources?
Here's how I would approach it... Based on a given detector geometry you can imagine it has a detection efficiency as a function of distance from the detector. Now you can imagine the source traveling in a straight line such that it passes some minimum some distance from the detector and at some velocity. From that path there is an expected number of counts that the detector would receive on average from that source as a function of minimum distance. Using that function and the background count rate one can estimate how close the source path needs to be from the detector to reliably detect it. From this you can optimize the altitude and velocity of the detector traveling along the road. I hope this brief explanation makes some sense. The hardest part would be to decide what signal to noise ratio is acceptable. For vehicle mounted it would simpler because you can probably just fix the elevation and only focus on the velocity as a variable.
What if we recreate the journey, use the same truck with the same type of containers and see if we can re-create the malfunction, then start the search forward/backwards from there?
The search area is immense. People (even locals) fail to understand the incredibly vast distances. Sure, you can think up a comparison from your own context of a few hundred kms... but does your example have nothing, and I mean, literally nothing manmade but the road infrastructure itself in the proximity of the horizon for sometimes hundreds of kms? Few places do. In more remote places than this, say in the Kimberly, you might as well be on the moon. There's nothing out there to support you or resupply you; you always have to think about that ahead of time.
It's the middle of summer here, we are approaching our hottest month (February). Pavement, being a heat island, makes working alongside or on it a slow process. Exposure and heat stroke are real risks.
On the upside, the roads are sealed, and in relatively good condition and well designed when compared to say much of the US or the poorer parts of Europe but the odds that it falls into a crack or pothole will scale with the distance. A vehicle-mounted detector makes obvious sense but could be costly. However, as we know, especially at these temperatures, roads are slow moving rivers. It might even become embedded if it did indeed land on the surface. In which case it sounds like we may never find it.
Assuming it's most likely in the literal middle of nowhere. The risk of a member of the public coming into to direct physical contact would be highly unlikely. There are sections of road that haven't had human feet walk on them since they were last poured. But that introduces an interesting problem. What happens next time maintenance replace that section? Do crews need to be wary of digging it up, possibly aresolising it in the process? Maintenance is probably the most likely human contact scenario. Does every safety management plan now include the incredibly remote chance of finding it?
Sorry to nitpick, but I've driven across the USA many times and I've never had much to complain about with regards to our roads (outside of Ohio, fuck that state). Doubly so when comparing our road infrastructure to poorer countries.
I've driven across the country 4 times now, and lived in all four corners plus the middle (New England, Georgia, California, Washington, plus Minnesota/Iowa). In a cold weather state the roads tend to get rough because of the winters. Roads are expensive to maintain there. Never had any trouble at all in Texas or Arizona. Lots of trouble in California, though, and the Dakotas can be rough outside of I90 and I94. Not a function of negligence or anything in the Dakotas, it's just cold.
The Netherlands is a poorer country with about two thirds the GDP per Capita of the US. Here in Berkeley I see many potholes. I've never seen one there. And that's before we get into the increased road safety.
Please check out Michigan - I can only speak for the Ann Arbor area - but wow, compared to British Columbia (which has almost identical issues with salt, snow, freezing) - the roads there are really beaten up.
They even have a saying - there are two seasons in Michigan, Winter and Road Construction.
Agreed, as someone who has lived in multiple western countries and US states...the roads around the bay area are horrendous. I try to drive in the fast lane to avoid the damage done to the slow lane by trucks.
I really don't follow this narrative. Yes it's hot and remote and it's a 1400 km road. All of those things are clear. It's still very easy to put sensitive detectors inside a vehicle and drive along the road. These are uncommon and fairly expensive devices but there are plenty of them around. If the source is on or near the road it will be found that way pretty easily.
The road is mostly sealed (Perth (State Capital City) -> Mt Newman (Big hub town in Pilbarra)) with a short tail end road of maybe 50 km to the site in question that'll be probably graded gravel - rough, bumpy, but essentially flat.
With five days gone it's already been flown and driven .. at this stage they're either looking at trace signal and indications the slug has gone well off route in a truck tyre OR doubling back to see if any site workers flying out pilfered it as a souvenir and flew out to Thailand for a holiday since.
Another Nit - I don't think that the odds it falls into a crack or pothole scales with the distance - it's a fixed probability based on the condition of the road, and not its length.
Presumably something that got exponentially worse with proximity would have badness e^(-kr) where r is distance and k is some constant. So depending on k, it’s worse by some constant amount when you bring d down from 1 meter to zero. This is, notably, finitely worse.
But k/r^2 (different k) is a whole different beast. It’s infinitely worse at zero distance!
Of course, the radioactive source itself is not a point, and the human body isn’t a point either, so it’s not infinitely bad at zero range. Closer than a meter or so (very roughly the size of a body), it will merely concentrate the exposure over a smaller portion of the target and deliver a larger fraction of its total output to the target. The latter effect is a constant factor not vastly greater than 1 when comparing 1 meter to zero meters.
Please consider writing to the responsible government department and give them your credentials and suggestion.
This thing has been missing for months. Their current detection strategy is to post a picture of a watch battery on Facebook and hope it just magically shows up.
We're a little deficient in technology here in Australia, especially in government, doubly so in state government.
It was lost in transit at most 20 days ago between January 11 and January 16.
It was logged as missing five days ago on January 25.
> Their current detection strategy is to post a picture of a watch battery on Facebook and hope it just magically shows up.
This is patently false.
> We're a little deficient in technology here in Australia
Perhaps surprisingly Australia is one of the world leaders in international radiometric mapping having expertise going back 50+ years having mapped multiple entire countries (Australia, Fiji, Mali, and a number of others).
I’m usually one of the first to throw shade at the Australian government but to claim that “this thing has been missing for months” isn’t misleading - it’s a lie.
Also to say the tactics being used to find the capsule being limited to “post a picture of a watch batter on Facebook and hope it magically shows up” would be misleading.
1)The public alerts and posts are to keep the public informed as to what it is. This is for the very small chance someone does stumble onto it to limit the risk to the public.
2)They are searching the route with handheld detectors and soon detectors on vehicles using the trucks GPS data to map the route
Not sure what this has to do with the Australian Government? This particular item of lost property belongs to a mining company, and since they don't want to take the blame, they've already trying to passed the blamed onto the contractor who was given the job to move the item.
