Kauai Radiation Monitors Detect Possible
June 14, 2011
By Tim Flanegin
Early Friday morning (June 10, 2011), at about 3:00 A.M.
local time, one of our new
Hawaii broadcast a
over the network, reaching a sustained level of
over 100 CPM
(Counts per Minute) for a period of about
peaking as high as 141 CPM at one point. The readings then
subsided to normal
background levels of about 37 CPM for that
station, but within less than 2 hours, trended quickly up
again to over 100 CPM for another 5 minutes or so. The
graph at right depicts this activity.
For context, this is the Kauai
station, and within the Hawaiian
archipelago, Kauai is the main island at the
far northwest end of the
chain, actually 300 miles from the Big
Island of Hawaii, placing it closest to Japan
about 3,500 miles away. And to boot, the
Kauai station is located on the north shore of the island,
in Princeville. You can see the station on the map – the
yellow, numbered circle at top left.
The station is operating a traditional Geiger counter,
affixed with an external probe built around the same
pancake tube as in the Inspector line of
instruments, so it is capable of
detecting low levels of
Alpha, Beta, and Gamma radiation.
Data output is through the headphone jack of the survey
meter. The Geiger counter is set up for
protected from the elements under the eaves of the
structure, with the
thin mica end window
of the Geiger-Mueller tube oriented downward to prevent
contamination from possible fallout.
So those are the facts of the case. The question now is,
“Did the Kauai
station detect radiation emanating from Fukushima?”
To answer that, let’s review these points:
First of all,
the detection was not just a momentary spike
in radiation which could be explained by an
instantaneous background surge, a software glitch, or a
connection aberration, all circumstances that have triggered
false alerts before.
The level of
detection was three times higher than normal background
radiation for that station, and
sustained for periods as
long as 15 minutes, which rules out random
spikes in background.
The sustained levels of high readings, not once but
twice, and separated by subsistence to normal levels,
tend to rule out a
malfunctioning instrument. Having said
that, we have a knowledgeable person in Geiger counter
design looking into the validity of the data output.
The station reports that “the Geiger counter’s integrity
was not compromised in any way that we can tell. Safe, dry,
under the eaves.” and knows of
no local explanation for
the high readings.
of a radiation burst from solar flares, but
the recent sunspot activity reported in the news was already
over, according to one source. And in the 7 years that I
have been continuously monitoring, I have
never seen a sustained, elevated radiation level like this
from any solar flare activity.
I asked the Kauai station if the
detection correlated with any rainfall at that time?
being the “Garden
Isle“, the predictable response was, “Hard
to say, it rains all the time here”. And besides, he was
sleeping at 3:00 in the morning. We know that rainfall can
contain naturally occurring radioactive contaminants, as
even my own tests have confirmed. But my detection was
slight, and the Kauai readings were quite significant. And
if his radiation hit was rainfall related, why was this the
first time his station triggered an alert, given frequent
rainfall during the last week he has been monitoring?
Unfortunately, our Monitoring Stations on
and the Big
Island were not operating at the same time,
so we lack confirmation of readings. However, the Big Island
station is run by a sailor with extensive experience in
meteorology, and a few days ago, he essentially predicted
these events, i.e. what he believes to be
weather patterns steering
radiation fallout from Fukushima to Hawaii.
And with that, my tentative conclusion is that the
Kauai station did
in fact detect radiation from Fukushima
– it looks like it, it smells like it, and it feels like