March 20, 2010 - Gamma values shot up 10x background in Las Vegas on Thursday

Something is wrong with the Department of Energy's (DOE) radiation monitoring equipment in Las Vegas.

For the past 7+ days, graphs of gamma radiation values recorded by a Community Environmental Monitoring Program (CEMP) station outside the Atomic Testing Museum have shown strange-looking patterns.

Until March 18th, what was happening was that gamma maximums  spiked only in the late morning and early afternoon hours, but the average gamma readings didn't fluctuate at all, and the minimum gamma readings were all negative values (-20, -30 uRem/hr).

That all changed on March 18, when at 10am (local time) average gamma levels - which were unchanged for a long time - shot up to 10 times background levels for at least one 10 minute period.  Also, the gamma maximums since March 18 have not ceased (at late afternoon) - they're 24/7; their values were ranging from 15 microRem/hr to over 100 microRem/hr on March 18, and on March 19 and 20 max. gamma values soared to near 140 microRem/hr, which is 14 times background levels.

Also, since March 19th, it appears - this is my speculation - that the Desert Research Institute, which has the DOE contract to oversee the CEMP network, has been manually or automatically rendering 'quality-control' erasing of ANY spikes in the average gamma values.  They've done this before (during the Milford Flat Fire incident of 2007 when they erased 'public' data without explanation).  You can tell by the broken green line in the graphs below.  This line should be uninterrupted.

This points clearly to instrument error. Since the DOE has let this go on for 7+ days without correction, we can only assume that Las Vegas has been without functioning radiation monitors for at least one week.

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