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Tubes Asylum Questions about tubes and gear that glows. FAQ |
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Tubes Asylum Questions about tubes and gear that glows. FAQ |
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In Reply to: Can tubes be radioactive? posted by woffeldjur on October 28, 2014 at 04:23:05:
Most Geiger counters you can buy were made for atomic fall out measuring, so very unsensitive, and not suited for detecting low level of radiation. I was lucky to find a very sensitive laboratry probe for fluids, which is very sensitive in air also.
I bougt it after Fukushima, just to make sure I get no contaminated shipments from Japan. I never found anything whatsoever. So I have this unemployed Geiger counter here. What to do with it.
You need to understand the introduction, I will come to the tubes in the end.
I started checking the house and the garden. I found indeed some sources of radiation. For instance the red granite stones in my garden, they produce something. Some tiles in the house, and also some of the gypsum walls. How much it was? I can't tell, but it was at the limit of what the instrument can do, and I counted (with my Iphone) the ticks over 30 minutes of more, in order to see the difference with natural radiation coming from space and from the ground. So really very very little, and when you go further away as 3cm from whatever object, there is nothing detectable any more. All you hear is cosmic radiation ticking.
When checking some of the food, I was shocked. I was able to detect increased radio activity on a bag of dried mushrooms, my wife uses for cooking. It was really a lot. No need to count 30 minutes. Just hold the probe inside the bag, and I could hear more ticks than normal. That was the only alarming thing I ever found.
Now come the tubes. I have many of them, all kind of. So I took a box of 1945 made 211 tubes (thorium cathodes....) Guess what? A whole box of tubes produced nothing detectable whatsoever. I took a whole box with VR105 Voltage regulators. I burried the probe all inside. These contain radioactive Xenon gas. They say. Also no reaction whatsoever. I removed the heaters from a broken 845 tubes. Extremely carefully not to breath any dust. I held the probe right on them. Also no reaction whatsoever, but here the mass was not enough to my impression. Too tiny sample. But fair enough, inside a 211 is not more than that also.
So can tubes be radioactive? If you take cosmic radiation as a reference, my answer is no. Dried Mushrooms radiate more than 211 or VR105 tubes.
Jac
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- I measured it. - EML 16:31:09 11/01/14 (0)
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