[ RadSafe ] Fwd: hand held meters

Sun Jan 19 15:48:14 CST 2014

Hi Franz,

Your question is not at all "nasty"! While it may not be "politically
correct" that statement is my personal point of view. People having another
faith have to make up their own rules on when to get up or go to bed - or
what to eat or drink.

I respect other religions and believers and do not judge anyone. We have a
beautiful spot close by called "Pretty Place".
http://www.campgreenville.org/chapel.php

And actually, "Church" does not have to be a building; being out in nature
and enjoying the beauty of (God's) creation is as uplifting as any church
service I have attended.

I don't have any personal experience with the Polimaster instruments, but
will look into it since my access to instruments is rather limited since
retirement - but I still like to "play".

Let me know if you get to the South-East of the US and maybe we can go
"rock hunting" in the "Blue Ridge Mountains". And I can get to practice my
rather "rusty" German on you.

I also wish you long, happy and healthy retirement!
.
Best Regards,

Hans

* Retirement is, when the only day you have to set your alarm clock is
Sunday - so you are not late for church!*

On Sun, Jan 19, 2014 at 12:13 PM, Franz Schönhofer <
franz.schoenhofer at chello.at> wrote:

> Hans.
>
> I fully understand your praise of retirement, but I still have a nasty
> question to your statement, that the alarm clock has to be set only on
> Sunday not to be late to church. As I already expressed earlier I do not go
> to church unless it is a beautiful preromanic, romanic or at least a gothic
> one. When I am travelling in Europe I actually chose my itineraries so that
> I am able to visit a lot of them! But going back to my nasty question: How
> should retired muslims, Jews, buddhists
> and followers of other religions set their alarm clocks? You might know
> that muslims have to pray five or six times a day - any day - starting at
> sunrise, whether retired or not!
>
> I also enjoyed my retirement (about ten years ago), when I finally could
> start to work on topics I really was interested in, worked with
> international projects, went to conferences without having to ask for
> permission and gladly paid my participation costs to meet a lot of good
> friends of mine and to travel to foreign countries. This is my perception
> of "freedom"! Besides that I went out to the US-South-West for the x-th
> time for a whole month to visit "Uranium country" in Colorado, Arizona and
> Utah even vis. I had a very simple and cheap dose-rate-meter from
> Polimaster (from Bjelorussia) with me and this was good enough to find any
> former mine in this area!
>
> I wish you to continue your happy retirement for many, many years!
>
> Franz
>
>
>
> ----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- From: Hans J Wiegert
> Sent: Saturday, January 18, 2014 10:40 PM
> To: The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] Fwd: hand held meters
>
> Tianna,
>
> I would use the S. E. International "Monitor 4 EC" for this. Inexpensive
> and easy to use; no need to make things more complicated than they have to
> be.
>
> http://www.geigercounters.com/Monitor4EC.htm
> http://seintl.com/radiationalert/monitor_4.html
>
> We have some "hot" rocks close by in the Blue Ridge mountains and I have
> actually used some of the rocks as "check sources" for our instruments when
> doing a Radiation Survey on our equipment.
>
> Best Regards,
>
> Hans
>
> *Retirement is, when the only day you have to set your alarm clock is
> Sunday - so you are not late for church!*
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 12:10 PM, Tianna Gross <Tianna.Gross at uregina.ca>
> wrote:
>
>  Hello All,
>>
>> I would like to ask a follow up question regarding this topic. I am up in
>> Canada, so some regulations may differ but I would like to hear your
>> opinions and expertise. I have a academic geologist going into the field
>> to
>> "find" and "bring home" uranium and other rock samples for study. He goes
>> with other Government Geologists, which seem to be unaware of radiation
>> and
>> do not reliably monitor the samples to bring home. He would like to
>> purchase and bring a survey meter into the field for future studies, to
>> eliminate the "hotter" rocks from coming back on campus. What survey meter
>> do you recommend? I was thinking a GM pancake would be sufficient for
>> these
>> basic proposed activities. Thoughts?
>>
>> Thank you so much!
>>
>> Tianna
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -----------------------------------
>> Tianna Gross, M.Sc.
>> Radiation & Biological Safety Consultant
>> Health, Safety & Environment | Human Resources
>> University of Regina
>> Office: (306) 585.5198/ Cell: (306) 527.4320
>>
>> http://www.uregina.ca/hr/hse/
>>
>>
>>
>> This email and any attachments may contain information that is
>> confidential, legally privileged, or exempt from disclosure under
>> applicable law and is intended only for the user of the addressee(s). Any
>> use, disclosure or copying of this email by anyone other than an
>> addressee(s) is strictly prohibited. If you have received this email in
>> error, please delete or destroy it immediately without making a copy and
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>>
>> >>>
>>
>> Hi John:
>>
>> Hand-held devices are very sensitive to the geometry of the sampling
>> conditions. For instance, if you are in a swale or depression, the meter
>> will sense a higher level than if the ground is flat. This gave rise to
>> many misunderstood measurements related to e.g. craters made by artillery.
>> If a reading is made inside the crater, it will be always be higher than
>> the soil surrounding the crater.
>>
>> In my experience, it takes a full "field-season" for a newby geologist to
>> understand what he is actually measuring, and to take into account the
>> geometry of the measurement conditions.  I recommend that your people
>> leave
>> the meter on all the time so that they can get a basis for understanding
>> what they are measuring,
>>
>> Measurements will also differ according to the height above the soil that
>> an instrument "sees" the surrounding gamma values.  Difference will also
>> be
>> present in soils that have been used for agriculture from the radium &
>> radium progeny from the phosphate fertilizers spread on the soil.  SInce I
>> was "looking" for uranium ores, my measurements included background as
>> well
>> as elevated rates for rocks that had elevated levels of natural
>> radionuclides (K-U-Th Series).
>>
>> My ears can still hear the 1000s of hours that my scintillation counter
>> was
>> active during field work. I'd average about 140 days each year in the
>> field, so I became very accustomed to hearing artifacts. Temporal spikes
>> are not uncommon, so set the time constant on a longer integration time to
>> smooth these features out.
>>
>> Also, measurements with meters will vary slightly according to the ambient
>> temperature of the meter; but please guard against thermal shocks since it
>> is possible to crack the NaI crystal that way.
>>
>> Best!
>>
>> Dan ii
>>
>> Dan W McCarn, Geologist
>> 108 Sherwood Blvd
>> Los Alamos, NM 87544-3425
>> +1-505-672-2014 (Home – New Mexico)
>> +1-505-670-8123 (Mobile - New Mexico)
>> HotGreenChile at gmail.com (Private email) HotGreenChile at gmail dot com
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 3:51 PM, Chris Alston <achris1999 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> > Hi John
>> >
>> > I think that we need to ask you to be a little more specific as to
>> > your application.  So, for instance, what would you be looking for?
>> > E.g., interesting variations in background, deposits of uranium ore,
>> > subject of your choosing here_____________________.
>> >
>> > Generally speaking, NaI scintillometers are much more sensitive and
>> > faster than GM meters; but the time to "return to background" from a
>> > random spike is essentially immediate, if you are listening to an
>> > audio output.  Of course, you cannot tell that until you perceive the
>> > longer interval between clicks, or the lower frequency of a tone.
>> > Then, on many meters, one can select the response time constant of the
>> > visual indicator of dose rate or event count rate, on others it is
>> > preset for each range of the instrument.  A "short" time constant
>> > might be 0.5 - 2 seconds, a "long" one might be 5 - 22 seconds.  In
>> > this context, "response time" usually means something along the lines
>> > of how long it takes for a meter's needle to go from 10% to 90% of a
>> > final reading.
>> >
>> > Hope this helps a little.  It sounds to me like you might want to demo
>> > a couple of instruments, to see what works for you.
>> >
>> > Cheers
>> > cja
>> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> > From:  <JOHN.RICH at sargentlundy.com>
>> > Date: Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 3:18 PM
>> > Subject: [ RadSafe ] hand held meters
>> > To: radsafe at health.phys.iit.edu
>> > Cc: EDWARD.L.MARTIN at sargentlundy.com
>> >
>> > radsafers
>> >
>> > We're looking for practical experience on using hand held monitors in an
>> > outdoor setting.
>> >
>> > The background gamma dose rates in the area are about 0.02 mR/hr.
>> > The expected change that we want to see is from about 0.02 mR/hr to 0.04
>> > mR/hr.
>> > So the dose rate goes from about 0.02 mR/hr to 0.04 - 0.06 mR/hr. (two x
>> > background to 3 x background)
>> >
>> > The questions are:
>> > (1) what kind of hand held monitor would be good to see this change
>> (e.g.,
>> > PIC, GM tube, scintillation detector, etc.)?
>> > (2) since this is outdoors, how long should the surveyor wait for the
>> > readings to stabilize after a random spike?.
>> >
>> > I asked a similar question earlier,  and the consensus seemed to be that
>> > making these measurements with a hand held monitor was problematic. My
>> > personal experience in this area is very limited, but it seems like the
>> > spikes could reach about 0.01 mR/hr and lasted several seconds.
>> >
>> > thanx in advance  - -jmr
>> >
>> > John Rich
>> > 312-269-3768
>> > _______________________________________________
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