As you may have heard the exclusion (evacuation) zone around the Fukushima Daiichi plant continues to be adjusted to allow people into areas with lower radiation levels, and move them out of areas with higher levels. There has been no easy way to see what these areas look like so Safecast volunteer Azby created this…
Radiation
Ethan Zuckerman Goes Safecasting (and gets kicked out by armed guards)
Ethan Zuckerman, director the Center for Civic Media at MIT and friend of Safecast posse everywhere, took a bGeigie Nano for a spin the other day with the intent of checking out some depreciated nuclear facilities not too far from his house. He was successful, at least until the armed guards showed up and told him to GTFO.…
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Decon or Con? How is remediation being managed, and how effective is it?
HOW EFFECTIVE IS DECONTAMINATION ANYWAY? Does the Japanese government have a clear plan for decontaminating Fukushima Prefecture? Are the aims they’ve stated really feasible? Is anyone really able to keep track of the changing standards and guidelines? Lately the ministries tasked with managing this work, as well as spokespersons from various corners, seem to be…
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The bGeigie Nano Kit
The biggest limitation Safecast has faced in collecting data is the limited availability of our workhorse device, the bGeigie. The design works great, but it’s expensive (each one costs us about $1000) and time consuming (building one can take an entire week) which results in us having limited numbers of them to keep in use.…
Why is "Is it safe?" a hard question?
We are getting a lot of questions, both at info@safecast.org and through the Safecast group from concerned people – they all try to understand some aspect of radiation or another. And of course, many people ask similar questions, but without doubt the most often asked question is “Is [something] safe?” or a variation of it.…
Information, Misinformation, Disinformation (or, "These aren't the droids you're looking for.") Part 1
“YOU CAN’T ALWAYS FIND WHAT YOU’RE LOOKING FOR…..” [Skip to Part 2] At Safecast we assumed from the start that our data should be accurate, easy to understand, informative, well-visualized, and easily accessible. In many respects this simply reflects “best practices” in information design, as well as a vision of social responsibility in which openness…
Information, Misinformation, Disinformation (or, "These aren't the droids you're looking for.") Part 2
GOVERNMENT MONITORING POSTS [Part 1 here] In recent months there has been a fair amount of controversy concerning the accuracy of the radiation monitoring posts the government has installed all over Fukushima prefecture, and in some neighboring prefectures as well. We wrote about it back in July, 2012: TEPCO cheating on radiation levels by using…
NORWAY STILL RADIOACTIVE 26 YEARS AFTER CHERNOBYL
26 years have passed since the Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster. Many countries in Europe were affected of the radioactive fallout, including Norway which is roughly 2500 kilometers away from Chernobyl. On May 18, 2012 The Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority (NRPA) reported about a new helicopter survey (covering 3000 square kilometer) of the mountainous area in central…
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Safecast Geiger Counter Reference Design
The following is a post by contributing author bunnie, mirrored from the bunniestudios blog. This past weekend marked the anniversary of the Tohoku-Oki earthquake that devastated Japan. I had not felt my blood so cold since I watched the twin towers fall almost a decade earlier. I still vividly remember the twisting knots I felt…
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Safecast will be sharing radiation measurements with Minamisoma City
On February 21st we visited Minamisoma City’s Environmental Public Health Section under the Department of Civic Life. As one of the municipalities near the nuclear plants, Minamisoma has been receiving a good amount of media coverage recently. The city has expressed a strong interest in radiation measurements, and individual citizens are demanding that they want…
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