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At the start of the Cold War, Stalin chose one of the furthest outposts of his empire to test the Soviet Union's first nuclear bombs. Sixty years on, their cancerous legacy is still being felt. Jerome Taylor reports from Kurchatov Nemytov Oleg, a radiologist at the National Nuclear Centre checks is Geiger meter at the epicentre of the first nuclear test conducted by the Soviets on 29 August 1949. Walking through the flat and endless Kazakh steppe, Nemytov Oleg suddenly stops, fumbles in his desert camouflage trousers and pulls out a Geiger counter. The device bleeps into life. He peers pensively at the reading. When we got out of the car it read 3. Now, within a couple of hundred yards, it has jumped to 10. He unwraps breathing masks and two pairs of disposable shoe coverings. "If we want to go any further we will have to wear these," he says. Further along the dusty road he checks his device once more. "You see, the meter is now reading 21," he says. "If we were in a city far away from here it would read about 0.1. The radiation increases very quickly."

Radiation levels were higher than normal at the homes of as many as 10 Acreage families with brain tumors or brain cancer, according to a New York City law firm affiliated with the nationally known environmental activist Erin Brockovich. The radiation appears to be coming from well water, said Lemuel Srolovic, an attorney with the law firm Weitz & Luxenberg, which is investigating a suspected cancer cluster in the semi-rural community. A Stuart engineering company hired by the firm measured the radiation in mid-September using a Geiger counter. "Generally, it showed there appeared to be radioactive material in ground water being drawn up," Srolovic said. A report issued last week by the state Department of Environmental Protection similarly found elevated levels of radioactive particles in four wells in The Acreage. But the DEP stressed that the radiation can occur naturally, and the report said the problem is "simple" for homeowners to address by installing water-treatment systems.

Radiation levels were higher than normal at the homes of as many as 10 Acreage families with brain tumors or brain cancer, according to a New York City law firm affiliated with the nationally known environmental activist Erin Brockovich. The radiation appears to be coming from well water, said Lemuel Srolovic, an attorney with the law firm Weitz & Luxenberg, which is investigating a suspected cancer cluster in the semi-rural community. A Stuart engineering company hired by the firm measured the radiation in mid-September using a Geiger counter. "Generally, it showed there appeared to be radioactive material in ground water being drawn up," Srolovic said. A report issued last week by the state Department of Environmental Protection similarly found elevated levels of radioactive particles in four wells in The Acreage. But the DEP stressed that the radiation can occur naturally, and the report said the problem is "simple" for homeowners to address by installing water-treatment systems.

"RADIATION from Chernobyl was carried far and wide by the wind and some of it was deposited in heavy rain on the upland areas of North Wales. More than 300 Welsh farmers are still unable to take a total of 180,000 lambs to market without calling in Government inspectors armed with Geiger counters. The men from the ministry scan animals for signs of radiation because the land they graze is still contaminated. Many continue to have to be moved to lower pastures in order to be clear of radioactivity."

The wreck of the Russian cruiser Murmansk was pronounced safe and free from radioactivity by government inspectors. However, equipment from the ship caused alarm when it triggered Geiger counters.

Toronto, May 12 /CNW Telbec/ - A group of radiation-poisoned Torontonians stricken and dying on the sidewalk. Rescue teams with Geiger counters, stretchers and gas masks. This was the scene at several locations in downtown Toronto today where Greenpeace activists staged the aftermath of an accident at the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station.

Twenty-three years have passed since The Day of April 26 divided human fates into "before" and "after" the disaster at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Until this day it is the world's worst anthropogenic catastrophe unmatched for its environmental impact. For Ukraine Chornobyl is an everyday reality and a host of global-scale problems. Unfortunately, the problems caused by the catastrophe are as acute today as they were 23 years ago. Can one get used to devastated villages and abandoned fertile land? Today nothing prevents us from learning in detail what was happening on the banks of the Prypiat in late April-November 1986. In May 1986 foreigners were the first to learn the truth: on April 30 a Geiger counter on a Swedish nuclear power plant detected an unacceptably high level of radiation. After the Swedish government ascertained that the discharge did not take place in Sweden, it made an official inquiry. Mikhail Gorbachev addressed the people only 18 days after the disaster, on May 14. And three years passed before the information on the radioactivity conditions was declassified and publicized. After the explosion at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, the scientists at the Institute for Nuclear Research (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine) identified two groups of radionuclides emitted from the damaged reactor. One of them included volatile radioactive substances carried up high in aerosols with the streams of warm air (iodine-131, iodine-135, cesium-134, cesium-137, and strontium-90). Nearly 30 percent of cesium accumulated in the reactor core was emitted.

The Colorado pikeminnow, razorback sucker and humpback and bonytail chubs could be unraveling Western Colorado's second uranium boom. Last week, four conservation groups took on the federal government for opening the floodgates to uranium mining without assessing the impacts on the Dolores and San Miguel rivers. Western Colorado's first uranium boom arrived in the 1950s with the beginning of the Cold War. At that time, prospectors with newly patented mining claims and Geiger counters in hand descended en masse on the canyon country west of Durango. Many walked away with fortunes but left a legacy of mine waste and radioactive tailings in their wake. Three years ago, uranium prices once again spiked, and prospectors and mining companies started eyeing the desert of the Dolores River drainage. Local uranium mining got a big nudge in the summer of 2007 when the Department of Energy announced its Uranium Leasing Program. At that time, the agency opened 27,000 additional acres in San Miguel, Montrose and Mesa counties to prospectors seeking the radioactive ore. With this acreage, the DOE estimated that regional mines would produce 2 million tons of unrefined uranium per year.

"The arrival of men with a Geiger counter, rubber suits and face masks at the homes of former Bannister Federal Complex workers marked the only known residential contamination incident and a health mystery that's lasted two decades. An NBC Action News review of government documents and interviews with witnesses indicates government workers went to not only Ivory Mae Thomas' home, but actually searched the homes of four workers, and found contamination during a 1989 incident where a radioactive material got outside the plant."

How the Map Works: A growing number of Radiation Monitoring Stations across the country, using various models of Digital GeigerCounters, upload their Radiation Count data in real time to their computer using a Data Cable, and then over the Internet to this web site, all of this accomplished through GeigerGraph for Networks software. How to Read the Map: Referring to the Map Legend at the bottom left corner of the map, locate Monitoring Stations around the country that are contributing radiation data to this map as you read this, and watch the numbers on those monitoring stations update as frequently as every minute (your browser will automatically refresh). The numbers represent radiation Counts per Minute, abbreviated CPM, and under normal conditions, quantify the level of background radiation, i.e. environmental radiation from outer space as well as from the earth's crust and air. Depending on your location within the US, your elevation or altitude, and your model of Geiger counter, this background radiation level might average anywhere from 5 to 60 CPM, and while background radiation levels are random, it would be unusual for those levels to exceed 100 CPM. Thus, the "Alert Level" for the National Radiation Map is 100 CPM, so if you see any Monitoring Stations with CPM value above 100, further indicated by an Alert symbol over those stations, it probably means that some radioactive source above and beyond background radiation is responsible.

How the Map Works: A growing number of Radiation Monitoring Stations across the country, using various models of Digital GeigerCounters, upload their Radiation Count data in real time to their computer using a Data Cable, and then over the Internet to this web site, all of this accomplished through GeigerGraph for Networks software. How to Read the Map: Referring to the Map Legend at the bottom left corner of the map, locate Monitoring Stations around the country that are contributing radiation data to this map as you read this, and watch the numbers on those monitoring stations update as frequently as every minute (your browser will automatically refresh). The numbers represent radiation Counts per Minute, abbreviated CPM, and under normal conditions, quantify the level of background radiation, i.e. environmental radiation from outer space as well as from the earth's crust and air. Depending on your location within the US, your elevation or altitude, and your model of Geiger counter, this background radiation level might average anywhere from 5 to 60 CPM, and while background radiation levels are random, it would be unusual for those levels to exceed 100 CPM. Thus, the "Alert Level" for the National Radiation Map is 100 CPM, so if you see any Monitoring Stations with CPM value above 100, further indicated by an Alert symbol over those stations, it probably means that some radioactive source above and beyond background radiation is responsible.

This map visualises crowd-sourced geiger counter readings from across Japan. Click on the circles to get more information on the readings in each area. These readings are aggregated by Pachube here. Measurements are represented in units of microsieverts per hour ( µSv / h). Original readings used the unit nGy/h and I take the approximation 1 Gy = 1 Sv. (See the Wikipedia entry on Sieverts)