Personal Radiation Detector

[Gokiburi]

BTW, 06th August was the day when the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, unleashing hitherto unknown destructiveness...

Radiation there is back to normal background radiation levels, but an A-bomb and a nuclear power plant ar two completely different stories. It largely depends on the half-life of the radioactive isotopes. Some of them are gone in seconds or minutes, some of them will still be around for thousands of years. Chernobyl is still at the center of a 20 kilometer no-go zone...

[acjama]

Just a quick note: Geiger counter tells you how much you are receiving at the instant, and dosimeter will tell you how much you have received in total since your last reset. And yes, you will need to educate yourself to understand and interpret geiger counter readouts. You need to understand about fluctuations and recognize places that would have naturally occuring higher dose rate, such as constructed areas and such. Neither detector will tell you the source of the readouts, you have to study to recognize those.

The reason why you're safe in Kansai is that the radioactive particle distribution originating from Fukushima and travelling to the direction of Kansai (not many instances of that, by the way) will have spread so wide that it would not be detectable from the background radiation, and certaily would not be concentrated so as to create radiation hot spots.

The "danger" in Kansai is food. Radioactive particles have entered the food chain, and while it is illegal to sell such food, shirankao (知らん顔) is far more profitable, as has happened in Japan.

Geiger counters and dosimeters will not detect radiation other than airborne. You will need a laboratory to find out if your food or drink has been contaminated. I've seen a rice seller pointing a geiger counter at a pile of rice and telling "look, it's ok!" in a magazine. Mine was a sad and hollow laughter.

But other than that, go crazy. If you can't calibrate your meter, go near public detectors and make sure yours show about the same readings. Do this in many locations and many times, and you can trust yours. The chances are that at least some of the public detectors have been calibrated.

Sorry, no idea where to get one. But I'd order from abroad. "Demand and supply" has indeed stirred the bottom feeders to the surface.

End of not so quick note...