Caloundra Report June 2017
Monitoring Station Location Map
There was a steady increase in background levels in early June 2017, significantly above average.
As this event started in early June, the bench area around the monitoring GammaScout Geiger counter was cleaned, and the GammaScout was also cleaned to eliminate the possibility of dust contamination. This made no difference, as background levels remained higher than usual.
It was mostly dry for the month, with only 20mm of rain for the whole month. The local live radon monitor did detect small increases in local Radon levels that coincided with recorded background radiation level increases. These Radon level increases would have been a contributing factor to the background level increase, but not significant enough to be the only factor.
June month day average background chart, created from GammaScout Geiger counter 60 second data logging.
The June 2017 Cairns Caloundra comparison chart, shows that Cairns did not experience the background swings that Caloundra did. Cairns is located much further up the east coast of Australia, in the tropics.
Water Tank Filter Test
Here is a test of 34 grams of organic material caught in a local water tank inlet filter.
The main isotopes detected were Beryllium Be-7 and Lead Pb-210. Beryllium Be-7 can be created naturally in trace amounts by spallation in the upper atmosphere by cosmic rays. Lead Pb-210 is the decay daughter of naturally occurring Radon-222 decay.
Taking the difference in sensitivity into account, the Be-7 peak is around 14 times higher than the chart indicates. The Pb-210 would be around twice as high as show on the chart.
That is a lot of Be-7 in 34 grams of material. Would the levels of Pb-210 and Be-7 detected in the organic material collected from the water tank filter be sufficient enough to explain the significantly elevated local background levels here in June?
My Theory
There must have been a significant amount of cosmic ray spallation happening in the upper atmosphere recently, to produce this much Be-7.
The sun is becoming far less radiant. The sun is going into one of it's quiet periods. These occur approximately every four hundred years. Less radiance means the sun's heliosphere is much weaker. The sun's heliosphere acts as a shield, protecting the Earth from in coming cosmic rays. A much weaker heliosphere means more cosmic rays strike the upper atmosphere, which results in more atmospheric spallation, hence more Be-7 is detected in the water tank filter test.
I notice that when the elevated detections occurred in June, the wind was mostly coming from an easterly direction, off the Pacific Ocean. This suggests that volcanic and earthquake releases of naturally occurring Radon-222 into the atmosphere, was also a contributing factor.
