Events

Japanesque Radiation Monitoring

While in Moscow we agreed on the meeting with the representatives of non-profit organization Safecast; at that time we were preparing for the Russian-Japanese Forum organized by the “Rossiyskaya gazeta” newspaper together with the RF Foreign Ministry and Mainichi, the largest Japanese newspaper, in cooperation with the Japanese Foreign Ministry.

On a plane to the Forum, on the route Moscow – Tokyo, I had luck to meet Yuri Baturin, a pilot-cosmonaut, Hero of Russia, Corresponding Member of Russian Academy of Sciences and a very charming man. We had a long-lasting flight, and we talked about a lot of things. I also showed the astronaut our DO-RA device, and I turned the device on in order to measure the background radiation from cosmic rays during the whole flight. Over the period of more than 9 hours, the DO-RA device, compatible with all types of smartphones, monotonously measured the radiation intensity in the plane and the dose received by the passengers.

And here we are in Tokyo, the communication with the colleagues from Safecast is on the right track, and on Saturday morning we head for their office. Safecast is engaged radiation monitoring, primarily in Japan. The organization operates on grant subsidies from various international funds. Its structure in Tokyo comprises about 10-15 active employees, judging by the compact office and acting work positions. Most of the Safecast workers are volunteers. They carry out their work without any payment, altruistically. Moreover, the volunteers buy the devices for radiation monitoring at their own expense or receive them as gifts from the developers of dosimetric equipment through Safecast.

The database of the Safecast server has over 7.2 million measurements of the dose rate (background radiation). There have been more than 2 million of such measurements of dose rate from the beginning of 2013. It is certainly a great and noble work for the benefit of Japanese people. Today the organization's work is also valued by the state authorities of Japan. Although, they had previously treated with skepticism such measurements of background radiation made by the Safecast volunteers.

After a 30 minute drive from the Grand Palace, here we are, at the doors of the Safecast’s office. There is no one in there yet, although the doors are open and we could go freely inside and have a cup of coffee!

It must be the high level of Japanese safety and security, law and tact that provide such protection for the unprotected office!? We quietly waited for our colleagues in front of the open doors of their office.

The first employee of Safecast who came to the Saturday office was Kalin Kozhuharov, a nice Bulgarian, who was good at speaking Russian and several other
 languages. We gently asked whether it would be ok to place the sticker DO-RA on the doors of their office?! His reply was positive, and a minute later we went on talking in pure Russian about the intricacies of dosimetry and dosimeter assembly technologies, hardware components, sensors and meters of ionizing radiation.

Kalin told us about the Safecast organization itself, its problems, main areas of work and plans for the future. Safecast has its own hardware engineers, and therefore Kalin showed us various types of devices used for radiation monitoring the measurements of ionizing radiation. Most of such devices in sealed boxes are of large size, due to the modularity of their assembly, the specifics of measuring techniques and the applied Geiger-Mueller counters; they are mainly produced in the USA. And they are not cheap - around $ 400-500, and it is costly. Kalin said that the Japanese market could easily consume such devices at a price of $ 100-200 in case of the presence of such high-quality and accurate dosimeter-radiometers for smartphones. After all, the most active people have started using smart phones in everyday life a good while ago.

We also showed our miniature products of DO-RA line and discussed their advantages and disadvantages. At the same time we tested the operation of our devices measuring the different sources of ionizing radiation available in the laboratory of Safecast: Gamma, Beta and Alpha. Our modifications DO-RA.Chups and DO-RA.Uni coped with the task well, both indicators of ionizing radiation and dosimeters-radiometers. Also, Kalin took out a piece of wood from the safe box; this wood was brought from the Fukushima Prefecture. One side of this piece of wood had high-energy gamma radiation, because it was soaked with the radioactive rain water, mostly of Cs; the other side of the wood had practically no radioactivity.

An hour went by in talks with Kalin when Joe Moross, an American and another employee of Safecast, joined us. He spoke on his vision of Safecast strategy regarding Europe and America, where the same measurements take place, but not at the same extent as in Japan. Joe was enthusiastic about DO-RA.Si, our new development with the sensor on the basis of pure silicon (Si), and about the use of such devices in the Safecast project. In fact, we agreed on such use of our equipment, and promised to deliver the samples as quickly as we produce the test batch of DO-RA.Si. Then Joe brought a small bag of soil collected in the Fukushima prefecture, and laid it on the table in front of us.

We tried to quickly measure the level of ionization radiation by the two devices, DO-RA.Classic and the Safecast’s Inspector, for professional measurements of ionizing radiation, and including the measurements in the course of movement. The measurement results from both devices during the time of our lengthy conversation were very similar. It was exactly what we expected, as these devices worked on the same type of detectors - Geiger-Mueller counters, but with a different relative sensitivity of power to different types of ionizing radiation.

In the end of our beneficial meeting, which lasted more than two hours, we agreed to cooperate with the Safecast team on the use of the developments in the areas of cartography with the data on the levels of background radiation in different regions as part of the DO-RA.Soft program.

Tokyo

3 March 2013

Индикатор ионизирующего излучения ДО-РА с функцией дозиметра-радиометра

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