Ambient radioactivity live

The radioactive background, hour by hour

Everywhere on Earth a natural gamma radiation bathes the air: it comes from the rocks of the ground, uranium, thorium and potassium, and from cosmic rays. Probes measure the ambient dose rate in microsieverts per hour; in Europe it lies between 0.05 and 0.20 µSv/h depending on the geology, highest over granite massifs. A whole year at 0.10 µSv/h amounts to less than one millisievert.

The ODL network of the German Federal Office for Radiation Protection has 1,700 probes published as open data; Ultrastats follows three of them, in Freiburg near the French border, in Saarbrücken and in Berlin. Rain raises the curve by a few tens of percent for an hour or two, washing radon progeny down to the ground: that is the most frequent variation.

The French Téléray network of IRSN publishes comparable values on its website, but without an interface open to programs; as soon as it offers one, its beacons will join this page.