Page 36 - Gamma Rays News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Part, we're not detecting radioactivity. you want to know how much exposure have you had. >> a machine doesn't tell you how much exposure you've had three days ago? >> no. think of it like a camera. you can hear it clicking off as it's giving readings here, which are all low. they're significantly low as compared to anything that would trigger an alarm. that measures alpha, beta and gamma rays. this is just measuring the air constantly around us, 13 microrads per hour, and that's, again, a very low number. >> professor, how does radiation spread over distance? if you are -- the u.s. government...

Brooke we're on the top story of a seven-floor building in san francisco. the radiation detection unit here, this silver box, you can see what it looks like when it's open. some computer equipment. there's a bit of a filtration system that analyzes the air and is able to provide real-time data to the epa. joining us to talk about how this system works is eric stevenson with the bay area air quality management district. he manages this system for the epa. is this pretty simple equipment? explain, give us an overview of how it work. >> the operation is industry straightforward. a volume of air i...

It's designed to pick up these gamma rays. there's a crowd that gives off gamma rays that would fire it off. there's also particles that land on your skin or enter your -- through your mouth or through your breathing, and those are not detected by the dessimeter. i don't think the people in tokyo should be stampeding for the doors or anything like that. if the wind changes, i still have pretty serious concerns. >> we know now that the united states military is using drones, unmanned aircraft to fly over the facilities to conduct surveillance. you can see the situation, the shape of the buildin...

Seems to disagree. but there seems to be questions as to whether they're being exposed to potentially fatal doses of radiation. >> reporter: there's conflicting information and sometimes a complete lack of information. what people are trying to figure out is what are the radiation levels inside the plant, and that's an answer we don't know. we know what some of the high readings have been outside the plant, we know what some of the readings have been for example in tokyo, 20 times normal but still very low in terms of causing impact on human health. kiran, we know for example these ponds where...

Years. what's pushing the firemen back is the radiation that's coming from the spent fuel pool, and it's like, they're called gamma rays but it's a very high powered x-ray, and without the water in that fuel pool, there's two things, one, it's not being cooled but two it's not being shielded and so there's an awful lot of gamma rays flooding that site forcing the workers to say further away. >> which is why the water cannons have stopped, they've stopped the water cannons using the water on the facility and they say that they're not going to resume that and it may be because of those gamma ray...