Nathan Baca
1:14 PM (1 hour ago)

to staff
I'm a reporter for the local CBS station in Las Vegas. I notice as of Friday morning, your map has us as the highest radiation in the country. Can you provide a list of your sources and different gauges that are leading you to this number? I've reached out to our local scientists to see if they agree with this finding. Thanks!


Harlan Yother
1:52 PM (57 minutes ago)


Nuclear Emergency Tracking Center ( netc.com ) is an Early Warning Radiation service that collects data from EPA radnet database and private radiation monitoring stations. Our netc.com server calculates the NORM background radiation level for 3000+ stations around the world each night. When the current radiation level increases over the background radiation level, netc.com server set a Radcon level based on the degree of radiation increase. If it more than doubles the background radiation level, an alert is email, telling our customers of the radiation increase. We do not tell anyone what level of radiation is dangerous, only the rise in radiation.
Included is the one year chart for Las Vegas, NV. You can see the increase in radiation that trigger netc.com server and issue the Alert condition.

>> Radcon 2,3,4 show the direction that the NORM background radiation is going, if the levels are show up on the map, then the NORM background radiation is rising in the 3 month sliding scale. If the Radcon 1 ( green ) shows up then the radiation has leveled off or decreasing like in Japan.

>> No, RADCON-5 alerts are reach when the radiation exceeds the 3 month radiation level and there are many other factors that are included, to stop as many false alerts as possible, like Netc.com does not have enough data points to assume the station is reliable and to issue an alert.

Harlan

Question about how Netc.com works.
The Geiger tube is on the bottom of the unit, in most cases it does not matter.
It takes three month to get a reliable NORM background radiation level, so Netc.com guesses the best level base on the data it has collected.

Radcon levels 2,3,4 are set levels within the three months of data and shows the direction that the NORM background radiation is moving. The more times you see Radcon 2.3.4 the higher the NORM background radiation will be when it recalculates the NORM level, which is done every night. If the station stays at RADCON-1, then the radiation NORM background radiation level is stable or dropping like in Japan, where most of the stations are green. RADCON-5 Alert level is above the three months of data and has many other factors to calculate before issuing an Alert email message.

Included is my PI-Gmc-300 on an air filter where the fan collects the radioactive particles and the Geiger counter can pick up the radiation. This is a poor mans EPA radiation stations and works great. The air filter is from Holmes and is $15 from Walmart.

FYI - St. George, UT is downwind from the NTS (Nevada Test Site) where nuclear weapons were tested from the 50's through early 90's. I seem to recall reading that St. George got "dusted" more than once with fallout during that time. Related? Hmm..

I see that the map symbols have changed (have a black box behind each icon) and thought at first that it was a help item. It's not, at least as far as I can tell. Is this deliberate?

I have not seen any black boxes or heard of any change?

Do you still are them?
Have you tried using a different web browser?

At this time and date, they are still there - it looks as though each circular map icon has a black box behind it - only the cornertips of the square are sticking out from behind each circular icon - all colors, all icons, green/yellow, red/yellow, black/gold, black/red. All continents. Quite odd. I will look at it with another browser later.