The EPA has a radiation monitoring system (Rad Net) that I have accessed
and looked at for some west coast data from the last two weeks.
Interestingly, it is metric! (Well, wind directions are in degrees, of
course, and not in radians! And it uses the hour and minute as well as
the second for time intervals.) In addition to dates, times, and the
number of counts per minute in each channel (1 beta, 9 gamma) it
contains data on:
Ambient temperature (°C)
Flow rate (m3/h)
Sample volume (m3)
Wind direction (°)
Wind speed (m/s)
I sent in a comment to the EPA contact listed there thanking them for
using metric units, saying that this made things so very, very much easier.
This data seems to indicate that the folks on the west coast have not
received any worrisome increase in radiation as a result of the Japanese
reactor accidents. There was a bit of a spike in Eureka CA on March 18
but it did not exceed a 25 % increase in the data sets that I saw. In
fact, perhaps a brief 10 % increase was more like it; I have not flogged
the data with any statistical analysis yet. Pretty much, the situation
for Honolulu was the same, though a couple of days earlier. Seattle had
two similarly small spikes. Juneau had a pretty good spike on Mar 17 but
it still was only about 50 % to 60 % above normal readings.
Disclaimer: The above is merely an impression from scanning the data
visually. I have done no calculations. To facilitate doing those
calculations, I have asked the EPA for amplifying details.
Jim
--
James R. Frysinger
632 Stony Point Mountain Road
Doyle, TN 38559-3030
(C) 931.212.0267
(H) 931.657.3107
(F) 931.657.3108
