Radioactive Snow discovered in St. Louis

On a normal day Michael Janitch measures around 30 counts of radiation per minute in his backyard. However, recently when it snows that number is tripled. Could this be an indication that fallout from Fukishima is making its way to the USA via precipitation?

On December 14, Janitch conducted two ten-minute tests with his Geiger counter and found radioactivity levels between 74.2 and 81.4 counts per minute.

blogs.riverfronttimes.com...

BlackJackal
On a normal day Michael Janitch measures around 30 counts of radiation per minute in his backyard. However, recently when it snows that number is tripled. Could this be an indication that fallout from Fukishima is making its way to the USA via precipitation?

On December 14, Janitch conducted two ten-minute tests with his Geiger counter and found radioactivity levels between 74.2 and 81.4 counts per minute.

blogs.riverfronttimes.com...

I would compare results to:

radiationnetwork.com...

It would be interesting to know what his verified baseline was.

reply to post by BlackJackal


If he hasn't checked before, he should be looking at pooling water from roofs coming down through eavestroughing. It is especially bad if you can't direct the water away from the house and you have a concrete foundation. Water coming off the roof will collect roughly 12" (depending on soffet size) away from the house and permeate the ground right up to the foundation face. Concrete when exposed to ionizing radiation breaks down and releases increased amounts of radon gas. So not only do you get the foundation collapsing over time, you also get a poisonous gas that causes lung cancer and other detrimental effects as a bonus ;-)

Radon Gas at Duckduckgo.com

Fukushima is a slow-kill process. Once you figure out what has been done to you, it will be far too late.

Cheers - Dave

"Glow snow"... that's what I am waiting for...

We can all make "dirty snowballs" and have "simulated comet" fights...

Not much to worry about, the reality is that background radiation varies by about a factor of 100 around the world, with a few hot spots caused by exposed shield rock, and local coal burning plants. (No typo, coal and fossil fuel burning processes pump out a nice amount of radiation in the form of dust)

Furthermore, the rain being apparently contaminated is most likely dust. Uranium and Thorium in dust particles put out various radiation signatures and have a few long and short lived daughters. Polonium and lead daughters are known to stick to surfaces. So when it rains, the water washes this off of surfaces and it collects.

Seriously a factor of 2 is totally in the noise. You can quadruple your normal daily dose depending on if you eat bananas or not.

For all the denying of ignorance people pertain around here, its time it actually happened and people educated themselves a little bit rather than listening to a couple of sound bites and then self proclaiming expert level knowledge

BlackJackal
On a normal day Michael Janitch measures around 30 counts of radiation per minute in his backyard. However, recently when it snows that number is tripled. Could this be an indication that fallout from Fukishima is making its way to the USA via precipitation?

Yes, and it started back in 2011...and continues today and future years to come.

ErosA433
Not much to worry about, the reality is that background radiation varies by about a factor of 100 around the world, with a few hot spots caused by exposed shield rock, and local coal burning plants. (No typo, coal and fossil fuel burning processes pump out a nice amount of radiation in the form of dust)

Furthermore, the rain being apparently contaminated is most likely dust. Uranium and Thorium in dust particles put out various radiation signatures and have a few long and short lived daughters. Polonium and lead daughters are known to stick to surfaces. So when it rains, the water washes this off of surfaces and it collects.

Seriously a factor of 2 is totally in the noise. You can quadruple your normal daily dose depending on if you eat bananas or not.

For all the denying of ignorance people pertain around here, its time it actually happened and people educated themselves a little bit rather than listening to a couple of sound bites and then self proclaiming expert level knowledge

So we don't have to worry about Fukushima fallout?

ErosA433
Not much to worry about, the reality is that background radiation varies by about a factor of 100 around the world, with a few hot spots caused by exposed shield rock, and local coal burning plants. (No typo, coal and fossil fuel burning processes pump out a nice amount of radiation in the form of dust)

Furthermore, the rain being apparently contaminated is most likely dust. Uranium and Thorium in dust particles put out various radiation signatures and have a few long and short lived daughters. Polonium and lead daughters are known to stick to surfaces. So when it rains, the water washes this off of surfaces and it collects.

Seriously a factor of 2 is totally in the noise. You can quadruple your normal daily dose depending on if you eat bananas or not.

For all the denying of ignorance people pertain around here, its time it actually happened and people educated themselves a little bit rather than listening to a couple of sound bites and then self proclaiming expert level knowledge

Bravo Eros! Bravo! So well said!

PlanetXisHERE


So we don't have to worry about Fukushima fallout?

It depends on who the we you're talking about is.

If I lived in Japan I would be worried. I live on the west coast of the USA and I am not worried given what I know about the nature of the radiation release (its kinda doomy to call it "fallout" it's not like a bomb going off in the upper atmosphere).

I've looked at both the Washington State radiation network data as well as the independent radiation network and there is really nothing to worry about.

Will I eat certain foods known to come from Japan. Probably not. But that's a far cry from "OMG, they're nuking the world!"

PlanetXisHERE

So we don't have to worry about Fukushima fallout?

We should absolutely worry, but it is about context and risk, as Jade pointed out. My point is that if you are measuring 2x increase... or a (noise + background)/background of 2... it is nothing really to worry about. It is hardly fallout. It was not like Chernobyl, in which highly activated graphite was ejected from the plant, taking with it big chunks of material.

There is too much misinformation and doom about the event. It was bad, I by no means play the event down. My opinion is that given it took a 9.0 Earthquite and the resulting huge Tsunami to take out 1 nuclear power plant... it logically shows that the thing was built to withstand a hell of a lot... but not a wave as big as that. Nuclear power is extremely safe it shows. When a plant does fail though, the result is bad.

The aftermath was not good and it is actually fantastic that people are interested and want to do independent monitoring.

But without any knowledge of how radiation works, what kinds of backgrounds you see on a day to day basis and how they change depending on the weather and local conditions however is not very helpful. Seriously, a change in wind direction can cause a 2x increase in backgrounds depending where you are.

A little aside about radiation safety, and nuclear power. Containment and shielding standards are so strict that did you know? If i had to live next to a coal plant, or a nuclear plant... which one would I choose? Id choose a nuclear plant. Why? Because background radiation levels from the plant will be some 50-100x less than next to a coal plant.

Oh but coal is fine right? People only dont care about coal because we are traditionally used to it. nuclear is all new and scary! Since on ATS the number of delusional paranoid people seems to be statistically high, I can tell you a nice little fact. Look around you. Do you see any black objects? black plastics maybe, maybe black cables? Do you know what makes them black?

Heavy metals make them black... Do you know what tends to be in mixes of heavy metals? OOOOH thats right, Uranium and Thorium. I work for a Dark Matter experiment, and you know, we need to control materials to a very high standard of radio purity. We spent a lot of time doing tests of various materials for the amount of radon that pours out of them and how to get rid of radon daughters. Did you know? One of the worse things we found was computer cables. We had one cable that was giving some 65,000 Radon atoms a day per ft of cable. Sounds like a lot right? Well if that is in equilibrium, Radon gives 3 alphas, so just from alphas, that is 2.2 counts/s per ft of cable. We are surrounded by them every day, electrical workers are working next to these types of cables, handling them, cutting them... no one worries about radiation dose from those right? The real risk of these is the slow build up for lead 210, which has a 20 year half life... But im telling you, that its not really an issue.

Given that bit of information, and the fact that a change of wind direction can increase/decrease radiation levels by a factor of 100... you will hopefully see how statistically insignificant a 2x increase during/after rainfall really is.

If you look at cancer prevalence around the world, you might be lead to believe that in areas with high backgrounds, it would be worse... Truth is, there is no correlation at all.

Been on a flight this(last) year? how long was it? if your total flight time was more than 12 hours, well done, you just got a worse dose than walking around the Fukushima site for about 5 hours.

well.. this is standard knowledge I brought up on Wikipedia for googling the word 'rads' (emphasis mine & sentencing restructure for better readability do to the nature of the subject. Click the ARS link to get more info on Acute Radiation Syndrome (sickness))

Health effects[edit]

Main article: Radiation poisoning
A dose of under 100 rad will typically produce no immediate symptoms other than blood changes. 100 to 200 rad delivered in less than a day will cause acute radiation syndrome, (ARS) but is usuallynot fatal.

Doses of 200 to 1,000 rad delivered in a few hours will cause serious illness with poor outlook at the upper end of the range.

Doses of more than 1,000 rad are almost invariably fatal.[2] The same dose given over a longer period of time is less likely to cause ARS. Dose thresholds are about 50% higher for dose rates of 20 rad/h, and even higher for lower dose rates.[3]

Radiation increases the risk of cancer and other stochastic effects at any dose. The International Commission on Radiological Protection maintains a model of these risks as a function of absorbed dose and other factors. That model calculates an effective radiation dose, measured units of rem, which is more representative of the stochastic risk than the absorbed dose in rad. In most power plant scenarios, where the radiation environment is dominated by gamma or x rays applied uniformly to the whole body, 1 rad of absorbed dose gives 1 rem of effective dose.[4] In other situations, the effective dose in rem might be thirty times higher or thousands of time lower than the absorbed dose in rad.

ETA:

Also remember that the 7/10 rule still applies. For every 7 fold hours, the RADS per hour can be divided by 10.

source

Also, 1 more source Radiationnetwork.com

I've never thought about radioactive snow before but now that I have I can see a whole set of other problems. Snow dumping sites are going to be highly radioactive and what's going to happen in the spring? Looks like cites are going to need a few million more in their snow removal budget to include hazmat now.

FlySolo
I've never thought about radioactive snow before but now that I have I can see a whole set of other problems. Snow dumping sites are going to be highly radioactive and what's going to happen in the spring? Looks like cites are going to need a few million more in their snow removal budget to include hazmat now.

Read the above... NO simply NO... By your logic, we should ban bananas

I cannot believe how many west coasters are in denial about this. My husband's sister lives right near Moss Beach where radiation levels are reading high. When he asked her if she was thinking of taking some action, she laughed. I really hope she'll be alright. The basic attitude of her friends are that of "nothing's wrong, it won't happen to me, it's not a big deal". I sure hope they are right!

try denying ignorance and read the thread.

I personally cant believe how many 'educated people' know nothing about radiation, normal levels and even a basic grasp of statistics.

im not sure it this is the reason but even the snow feels not normal when you pick it up and pack it in to a snow ball.

will it come to the point to where all the lakes will contaminated

reply to post by mrFMPerson


the constancy of snow is highly dependant upon the temperature at which it forms, is set down, and the temperature when it is scooped up.

It can go right from wet and soggy to powder dust that is impossible to make snowballs out of.

Source : Canada

I'm rather surprised people are still idly speculating about this as they describe either living in areas in question or directly knowing people who do.

After Fukushima happened, getting any form of radiation detection equipment was a laugh and a half because a few million people had roughly the same idea. Now? It's a very different thing since that isn't a burning issue on the front pages, daily. Now? Radiation detection gear is readily available from any number of mail order houses and runs between $150 to a few thousand dollars for something useful in this context.

Why wonder and listen to others? Buy a handheld unit, spend a few hours learning the (MANY) ways they measure radiation and how those all convert into each other's readings to make sense of charts and go take direct readings in the real world.

I distinctly recall some actual problems being located in PA and elsewhere back when this began by the fact normal people were out detecting everything imaginable and where people don't commonly poke that stuff, so some things were found that hadn't been widely known. Domestic problems and such.... There are a lot of good reasons to have one and Fuku sense vs. scare is as good a reason as any, IMO.