contador geiger
contadorgeiger
Have had a ton of fun with this one: https://www.amazon.com/GQ-GMC300EPlus-Fulfill-Radiation-Detector/dp/B00IN8TJYY
It has a recurring alarm that starts beeping above 100cpm, but it can be turned off in settings. I've never come across uranium glass that really set it off. Detectable, but very low. However if you enjoy finding radioactive antiques in general, I highly recommend getting one.
On a side note, I'm curious to know what are some of the higher cpm readings everyone has come across from uranium glass.
I got 30mci, and my geek husband bought this radiation meter to get an idea of how radioactive I was: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IN8TJYY
On the first day (Friday) this meter was clicking like crazy if it got within 10 feet of me. The next day it was 6-8 feet and so on. The radioactive “bubble” around me kept shrinking each day. The doctor told me I could leave isolation on Monday, and by then my bubble was 1-2 feet so I came out of the bedroom and just kept my distance from everyone for a few more days. When I held the monitor close to my neck it clicked like crazy, so I knew there was uptake in my thyroid bed (which the whole body scan confirmed).
6 months later I took a 5mci tracer pill to prep for another whole body scan. I had to isolate for 1 day that time, and my bubble was smaller. The meter didn’t go crazy when I held it to my neck, and when I had the WBS nothing lit up there.
You guys seems know thing or two about radioactivity. What are your thoughts on portable gamma meter on amazon which cost below $100
Do you think such device be able to detect small amount of radiation? Let’s say if I want to measure that Fukushima grouper, would it detect anything at all?
Here's a geiger counter on amazon for under $100, OP.
Just saying...
I own 2 of these radiation detectors Amazon, and have experimented with them quite a bit. My home detector automatically updates this map with samples it takes every second by uploading a log every 5 minutes. My own area hovers around 30 CPM, and is considered low. It spikes to 50s when it rains and pushes radon out of the soil. I've seen it spike 1 time into the 150 range, but it only lasted 10 minutes, and I suspect it was cosmic radiation (low solar activity at the time). An average for the U.S. is around 85 CPM. Most of my data on the CPM averages comes from downloading charts from within the pay-walled part of the netc.com site.
However, I also have a dentist friend who has let me experiment with its calibration by shooting it with his dental x-ray scanner, which is calibrated professionally every year, to these standards. From this, I know the basic amount of radiation a single x-ray exposure emits (0.005 mSv detector counts 30 CPM on average) and also how much a full mouth x-ray exposure emits (0.16 mSv detector counts 280 CPM on average).
1 single x-ray is equivalent to 1 day of background radiation. An average American's exposure to radiation is about 6.24 seiverts (seivert = 1000mSV) from all background radiation (cosmic, solar, gas, food, water, etc) per year.
This chart (pdf), does a good job of showing the dosage rates as they apply to health. With the readings at Richland of 350 CPM, if those levels had stayed consistently high, it would be equivalent of 2 CT Scans. Now they don't appear to be staying high, they are already tipping down, but are still higher than many other areas in the country.
Spikes happen often enough that it's not usually cause for alarm. I've only seen them jump like that a few times, and usually they subside quickly. My concern here, was that it was so close to Hanford, that it could be early warning of higher radiation levels incoming.
At this point, I'm not concerned any more, but will continue to keep an eye on this situation.
The decay chain for those is alpha and beta particles for 226 and 228 respectively.
My usual go-to is the a Radiation Alert Ranger. I've used them and they're solid devices. It has a nice, large, exposed pancake detector that will be more sensitive to low levels and particle energies compared to something that has the detector buried inside a plastic case. A cheaper option that I've not used but is pretty popular is this guy. Alpha and beta can be blocked by the plastic case but it'll still do the job of telling you if you have a hot sample or not.
I wouldn't use either for dosimetry or to get accurate absolute measurements (though the Ranger should be better in this regard). For accurate real-time dosimetry or absolute measurement with a calibrated NIST-traceable detector I don't think you'll find anything suitable for under $2k, but you don't need it for your purposes which are largely "should I be near this core sample or not?"
The "uppity stand on principle" part of me says that if you're likely to be exposed to radioactive substances during your work, your company should damn well be providing these things to you, should have training/procedures in place to make sure everyone knows how to use them, and should have established process for both dosimetry monitoring and equipment calibration. But I realize it's an imperfect world.
If it's not your money, go with the Radiation Alert (or possibly a higher end device). If it's your money the GQ will get the job done. It's a pretty popular one and there are tons of videos/reviews of it on Youtube if you want to know more.
These ($90)are fairly well regarded for the price. SE International makes some pretty good ones with pancake detectors. The Radiation Alert (~$450ish) does a fine job.
They don't detect and won't be sensitive to everything, and the response isn't linear. They're supremely useful tools but in uncontrolled environments shouldn't be taken as gospel. As for neutron detection I don't know of any "cheap" options.
welcome to the community! Before getting anything, you'll definitely want to get a geiger counter. If you don't know the difference between alpha, beta, and gamma radiation I'd learn about that too (lots of resources on youtube).
For a geiger counter, I wouldn't get anything analog or vintage without experience with digital geiger counters first. Building a geiger counter is fun, but I wouldn't recommend that either without some kind of prebuilt geiger counter in your hands.
The main two categories of digital geiger counters are ones with geiger muller tubes (gm tubes) and pancake probes. Most gm tubes will be less sensitive than pancake probes and they won't be able to detect alpha radiation, but they're a whole lot more cost effective. Pancake probes are more sensitive and detect alphas, but are pretty costly. You'd probably be fine with a gm tube though, as starting out you don't really need to detect alphas, and sensitivity isn't super important. I personally got a pancake probe, but it's really not necessary for a beginner.
As for specific models, you can find the GMC300P or GMC320P on amazon, or on united nuclear. The GMC geiger counter series is pretty popular as a cheap reliable geiger counter series. I haven't personally used one, but I've heard good things about them. There are a lot of other good options for gm tube counters, but the GMC line is probably the most cost effective. If you wanted to get a pancake probe geiger counter, I would personally recommend the radiation alert ranger, which is the one that I personally got. It's a bit pricey though, so you might want to stick to cheaper models starting out.
Once you've got a good geiger counter, it'd probably be a good idea to read publications on handling and storing radioactive specimens. Someone linked "Here be dragons", I can second that as a good publication to read over.
Once you're all sorted, you can either get some specimens online, or go out into the wild to find some! I would recommend the latter, it's much more rewarding.
You can order one off Amazon for about 90$ - GQ GMC300EPlus Fulfill Digital Nuclear Radiation Detector Monitor Meter https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IN8TJYY/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_i_GRCE3YXZTX4J727NYCB8
Ah! Sorry! I got this one and it was great. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IN8TJYY/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
the one OP is using is $87 on amazon, is that inexpensive enough?
https://www.amazon.com/GQ-GMC300EPlus-Fulfill-Radiation-Detector/dp/B00IN8TJYY
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Was crazy to see the levels initially then how they dropped
GQ GMC300EPlus Fulfill Digital Nuclear Radiation Detector Monitor Meter https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IN8TJYY/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_gwVtFbKS3P8FV
I’ve seen many good reviews on this one! A little dated looking but hey $75 ain’t bad!
Awesome reply :D
Yeah like I said, I'm not all that great on knowledge when it comes to radiation, beyond the basics.
One thing I did learn when looking this stuff up, is that those medical X-Ray devices actually have aluminum shielding to stop lower energy X-Rays, as they would be absorbed by the patient. What they want are mostly higher energy X-Rays so most of them pass through/at just the right distance. Makes sense when you think about it, it's just something I've never thought about. Kinda the opposite of radiation therapy, where you want the radiation to be absorbed at just the right distance, so you want weaker-ish particle.s
However the radiation produced by medical X-Ray images (not CT stuff, just like an arm xray) is fairly minimal (well absorbed by you as a human). Of course that's just for a fraction of a second, but it's also directly targeted at you.
> It was a sufficient concern in older color TVs that older TVs include an x-ray protection circuit (to prevent overvoltage on their rectifier tube).
I believe this was mostly fixed in the 50s or 60s or something though, wasn't it? Also wasn't there a scare a while back that CRTs were irradiating our eyes? Which was totally overblown due to how little they emit, and how the safety circuitry is made? Again, radiation is completely out of my element so pardon me if I'm totally wrong :p
> Measuring it is not so simple. Geiger counters have a complicated response curve to x-rays of different energies though. The readings being accurate only for a certain range of photon energies, something like cs-137 so you can roughly check your Fukushima or Chernobyl fallout.
Yeah, this one is completely true. However they will still detect X-Rays to a somewhat meaningful level just for a youtube video. Not to get super accurate readings, but enough for curiosity's sake. Afaik if it can detect gammas it can detect Xrays for the most part, right? Like this one I linked. Well I think it only detect xrays with a certain energy (which I think was your point?)
Side note, Photonic used that same model to pick up xrays from a vacuum tube. I knew it looked familiar. Link
Anyway learned a bit, thanks for the reply!