[ RadSafe ] Micrometer-level naked-eye detection of caesium

[BRONSON Frazier (CANBERRA)]

		Cary - I think your calculations are indeed off - my
quick calculations here on a snow-day in the NorthEast show that 1ppm
amounts to 3 E9 Bq/gram !!  
		
		It seems that they have discovered a form of liquid
scintillation counting.  

		Some flaws in their assumptions however.  Most all
compounds of Cs are soluble, so unlikely to still exist in soil as
hot-spots, after 2 rainy seasons there.  It will be spread out over
larger regions, which will then kill their spatial resolution claim too.
That issue also harms other imaging devices - they are good at abrupt
changes in radiation level, but not a uniform distributions.  

		While not really useful for the things they claim [to
pluck the offending particles of Cs from the soil thus rendering it
clean] and that they were apparently funded for, it might be an way to
enhance sensitivity or reduce exposure time for projects where
autoradiography looking for Cs is used.  

Frazier Bronson  
Canberra