[OSM-talk] radioactivity

Stefan de Konink stefan at konink.de
Sat Aug 8 23:42:37 BST 2009


On Sun, 9 Aug 2009, Frederik Ramm wrote:

> Forgive my scientific ignorance, but are actual measurements even static
> enough - I mean, if I measure radiation X at a certain place, is there
> reason to believe that it will (in the absence of catastrophic events)
> be more or less unchanged one month in the future?

It depends on the decay time. I just wanted to reply we would require some
sort of temporal database to actually facilitate this.

So to answer your point. If there is an actual measurement of lets say N
amount of becquerels, you can be pretty sure it is more fixed then your
typical roads. And if it is dangerous all depends on the type of
radiation it emits :)

So if we take normal uranium it will only be alpha radiation,
unless you eat, breath in dust etc. it is not harmful. (So you know
exactly the reason why you shouldn't eat mushrooms in East-Europe)

To equip your GPS device (the satelite already has a detector ;) with a
Geigercounter will probably give nice information, usefulness within OSM
-> 0. Just fork it into a thing like the altitude maps. ORM ;)


Stefan





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