I first tried with an SI-3BG, and thought something was wrong with my circuit. It’s just a very insensitive tube and detects one particle like, every other minute.

But then I got a $20 Chinese tube from AliExpress, and it works! Super excited! Making a PCB and an enclosure now. BTW the Chinese tubes use a conductive coating for the cathode and it makes them so pretty

The circuit is the Mighty Ohm counter (schematic open source online) on a breadboard, minus the microcontroller. I still plan to add one for logging, dose calculations and driving a display

Everyone who is interested should try and make one, it was only about $25 usd in parts (most of it the tube), and it put me in a good mood all week.

A while back I had posted some updates on hijacking an Air Things radon meter as an alpha spectrometer. This recaps all of that and shows the final results of the spectrum of mixtures of thoron and radon demonstrating how the Air Things is highly specific to the detection of radon.

Now using this for alpha spectrometry in solid surfaces is not practical as the alpha particles interactions with air cause the peaks to broad so much as to be useless. The Correntium cleverly electrostatically precipitates radon decay products onto the sensor thereby eliminating that issue.

However one could take the probe and sample and place it in a vacuum chamber and likely be able to measure alpha spectrum of other things as well. That may be my next step. But pretty amazed what you can do with this otherwise inexpensive setup.

Hey everyone, final post regarding the radium applicator, the authorities have secured the orphan source! No more risk so, but also my collection of radioactive minerals and other objects, I post my latest photos taken with them! Once again, a big thank you for your answers! Other post will follow with some video's of the devices becoming crazy.

Also the final mass of radium is approximately 130uCi!

So a few weeks back I posted about a little amateur experiment with my kids in the Ebersberg forest near Munich (local hotspot for Chernobyl Cs137). We found some mushrooms that weren’t Bay Boletes (Maronenröhrlinge), just a similar species, and our semi-quantitative setup (gammaspectrometer + lead castle) showed about 1.2 kBq/kg. Not bad, but we really wanted the real deal – the Bay Bolete, which usually comes later in the year, around mid-October.

This time we got lucky. Found a nice batch. We were pretty excited because locally these are the famous Cs137 concentrators. But honestly? The result was a bit disappointing: only 1.78 kBq/kg dried mushrooms. So yeah, it’s more than the other ones, but not like, many times more. Just a bit more.

Why these shrooms actually concentrate Cs137? And the answer is pretty cool: it’s down to two brown pigments in the cap. Badion A and Norbadion A. These are unusual naphtho-pyrandione dyes that you don’t find in, say, Steinpilze (cepes). They normally sit there as potassium complexes, but Norbadion A can also grab cesium instead. It forms a stable 1:1 complex with CsCl. Basically the pigment chelates the Cs137 instead of potassium, which is why Bay Boletes suck it up so efficiently while other boletes barely do.

If you want to see the chemical structure of that dye, there’s a screenshot from the linked publication: https://doi.org/10.1002/ange.19840960619 (me chemistry nerd, sorry.)

So.....next step is to isolate that BadionA/NorbadionA from the shrooms and....sniff it! (No just kidding! DONT DO THAT!)

All in all the value of 1.78kBq/kg dried shrooms is well below consumption thresholds by the EU, but I dont know if I would eat those, of course in a regular meal there are only a few grams of those inside. But that clear peak even with an amateur setup, hmmm...

Disclaimer&Setup: we dry the shrooms and fixate everything in a mini-marinelli with epoxy resin. (those puks are for me later neat little checksources, all legal - well below any restricted levels). Spectrometer is GSMAX8k and probe is GS1515CsI. We only have one calibration point in the same marinelli geometry, and only from dried/sieved soil - so anything here is amateur-semiquantitative, matrix effects a.o. are not considered.

Last image: you can even see it with the radiacode110 from my son, only after 18 minutes the 661keV peak comes up -> but only (!) in a leadcastle! Without you cant see jack shit. So highly recommended to get yourself a leadshield :-) for your radiacodes, it opens a complete new world :-)

Hi all ,

I am looking for a clean audio recording, or a video with usable audio, of an older analogue Geiger counter with an audible click output being brought close to a strong radiation source.

It's for an art project that will feature analogue audio recordings. Ideally it would be from Chernobyl or the Exclusion Zone but any genuinely hot source would help.

What I am after is the progression: sparse background clicks at a distance, building into a dense crackle as the probe gets closer. A Soviet-era instrument such as a DP-5V with its headphone output would be perfect, but other click-based counters are fine too.

The closest I have found is the linked YT video. It's almost perfect but it uses a digital counter, and once it gets close it switches to a steady alarm-style tone rather than individual clicks merging together.

Two questions:

1. Does anyone have, or know of, a recording like this?

2. Am I right that an analogue click counter would produce something like white noise at high count rates rather than a continuous beep?

Thanks in advance.

1970s era Pyrotronics ionizing smoke detector that runs off of 220 volts DC.
I also sit directly underneath, slightly adjacent to it for half of a day. Roughly 3 1/2 feet from it.
Am I going to have a few years knocked off my life?

Gamma radiography of a screw using Americium-241 as a ~60 keV gamma source instead of a X-ray beam. It can still be greatly improved with more distance from the source.

Made it with Tinkercad, I will 3D-Print it with gummi TPU :)

I’ve seen mentions of either 100 kBq or 200 kBq. which is it? does it vary significantly? Is the initial activity measured as just Sr90 or is it Sr90+Y90? Im thinking of obtaining a DP-5B or A and I’d love to try to predict the activity of the source.

"My favorite thing about radium water is it pulls the vaccine toxicity out of the body."

Darwinism I guess.

Alternative Health Influencer Boasts That He's Been Drinking From a Radioactive Jug for 250 Days Straight

How fungi concentrate radiation from the ground and Chernobyl.

I found this fascinating and wanted to share <3

Here is the measure of the real irradiation rate! It's insanely hot, and thanks to everyone for the information!!

I have recently bought this old Berthold LB 1200 on ebay which worked fine for the first few days without issue. Today I wanted to test some objects only to get a high reading and later realised it seems to be a malfunction l. Is there anything I could do to fix it. ( This is the first geiger counter I own so any help would be appreciated.)

I just found something very spicy and very interesting, not sure what it is but I guess some people can help me here, I have a wood stick with a source on it and a cap with a inscription of " substance, Armet de lisle, radioactive, it max out the radiacode 102 and the raysid ! More than 1mSv and on the radiacode more than 3Mcpm

District of Massachusetts | Massachusetts Man Pleads Guilty to Illegally Importing and Selling Plutonium From Russia | United States Department of Justice

Convicted felon also pleads guilty to mailing hazardous materials, unlawfully possessing ammunition and explosive materials and possessing child sexual abuse material

BOSTON – A convicted felon from Hadley, Mass. has pleaded guilty to illegally importing plutonium from Russia and selling the radioactive material – as well as other, highly toxic and hazardous materials – to customers in the United States and abroad. The defendant also plead guilty to unlawfully possessing ammunition and explosive materials as a convicted felon and possessing child sexual abuse material.

Jacob D. Miller, 44, pleaded guilty to one count of being a felon in possession of ammunition; one count of being a felon in possession of explosive materials; one count of importing nuclear material without lawful authority; one count of mailing hazardous materials; and one count of possession of child pornography. U.S. District Court Judge Mark G. Mastroianni scheduled sentencing for Jan. 21, 2027. 

Miller was indicted by a grand jury on April 17, 2025. He has remained in federal custody on pretrial detention since his arrest on April 9, 2025. According to court filings, on Feb. 9, 2004, Miller was convicted in Massachusetts state court of possessing child pornography and possessing an explosive device and was sentenced to one-half years of incarceration in a House of Correction to be followed by 10 years of probation.

Following his release, Miller started a business called Collect The Periodic Table (CTPT) through which he sold samples of elements listed in the periodic table of elements, including plutonium, which is highly radioactive, and thallium, which is highly toxic. Miller operated CTPT from his residence in South Hadley. In addition to selling through CTPT directly, Miller used an online third-party retailer, Bonanza, to conduct his sales.

Miller imported plutonium from Russia and arranged for it to be mailed to him at his residence. Between approximately Dec. 30, 2020 and March 31, 2025, Miller sold plutonium to approximately 67 customers throughout the United States and abroad. Miller shipped the plutonium from South Hadley to his customers through the United States mail, even though plutonium was a hazardous substance that was prohibited from being mailed.

Any questions about Getting some tritium Light Devices… Keychains , exit signs , markers , betalights … feel free to ask. I want to help you get some cool stuff. It’s easier to find than you think but it does require some research.

Hello everyone in the past few weeks I have been been working hard on my cloud chamber and I have reached minus 30 degrees celsius but my cloud chamber isn't working before this I also tried a peltier setup but that didn't work too and did this same thing I'm seeing bubbles instead of trails and tails. Please help😭😭

I've been trying to start my career as a radiation protection technician and so far I've reached out to the provided email on their website but haven't heard back in over 2 months. Is this normal? Should I try another way to get into the industry?

Edit: I live in Charlotte NC

2, 4x4x16” NaI(TI)
2x4x16” NaI(TI)
1.75Dx12.5” NaI(TI)
2, AlphaHound AB+G
Flir R225
2x2” NaI(TI) AlphaHound Graft
24x95mm LaBr3(Ce) grafted to a Radiacode

Gonna do some GPS roadmapping with the 4x4x16s over the next few days and hopefully some antiquing with smaller detectors.

RadView Nick

So I just got a radium watch. I've got it in a plastic bag to seal off any dust. I keep getting this spectroscopy when I run it with my 102. On the information page on radium the peaks seem to be more level. Any ideas on the discrepancy?

Light from intense alpha radiation coming from 5 mCi source of Polonium 210 interacting with a phosphor screen from an X-ray film cassette.

Safety Notice: Do not attempt, the radon source and the way radon is dispensed in the video includes passive safety aspects not easily discernible from the video. I will post a reply with more details. Do not attempt.

The video depicts the construction of a ZnS(Ag) coated vial - essentially a toy model of a Lucas Cell - which is then inoculated with 3 uCi of radon in air ( based on gamma dose rate assay ). This is about 5x the radon concentration of my prior attempt - and the entire interior of the vial is phosphor coated utilizing all of the alpha particles produced to full effect. This activates the radioluminescent phosphor such that it is faintly visible without darkness adapted vision, and rather amazing when captured with low light photography.

At the end of the video, the radon assay is also performed via dilution and a radon monitor for which a callibration curve is available from testing in an AARST approved STAR chamber. This again produced the frustrating and puzzling 3.3x discrepancy between gamma dose rate and radon concentration measurements. So is it 3 uCi or 10 uCi depending of if you believe physics or if you believe AARST? If it is some gross experimental error on my part, I have yet to discover it.

The Lucas Cell is a radon detection probe constructed of a radioluminescent phosphor lined canister mated to a photomultiplier tube. The tube can either run in current mode for high activity samples or in pulsed mode for decay event counting. In the vial above there is likely > 600,000 scintillations / second. For a typical radon monitor it may be dozens / second or minute at residential levels of radon. This works similarly to the ZnS(Ag) alpha probes used for contamination detection, except the sample is the enclosed air.

If the tube were placed in a light proof box with a photomultiplier, one could attach it to a common geiger counter to measure the radon. As it decays over the next 3 months, the residual will be ²¹⁰Pb in nanocurie quantities. This is easily detected by a well shielded consumer gamma spectrometer. The ²¹⁰Po will continue produce alpha particles for decades, replenished by its parent ²¹⁰Pb. This scintillation may be visible to well adapted eyes.

I have 2 gamma detectors of different size. The Bigger one has 300 cm^2 surface area and the smaller on has 170 cm ^2. Ideally the Smaller detector should be showing the 1/3 less ips than the Bigger Detector for Nulleffect, But its not happening here. I have also taken the readings with Bq/cm^2 unit. the values are identical, which makes sense. Can anyone share their insight why this is happening.