Why is this Beach in Southern California Radioactive?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 ต.ค. 2024
- I accidentally came across this beach down in Southern California that had portions of it that were radioactive to the point of being out of the ordinary. So I explored the site and was able to figure out why it was radioactive.
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There's a beach near my hometown in Scotland that has/had radioactive contamination from WWI surplus (radium dials etc) that were dumped. They have had to reinforce and add material to the shore in the past to prevent too much becoming exposed. They only sorted it in the last few years by sifting the entire beach for particles! Look up Dalegety Bay, Fife, Scotland if interested! Great vid as ever!
I really want to check out Scotland one of these days. I’ll have to add this location to the list.
Take Care @ Wortnik Thank You For The Report Water Soluble Isotopes Man Made Cancer For ALL
I love Scotland. One of my favorite places. So much untouched natural beauty. Some amazing history too.
Aberdeen has a massive amount of radiation around it. It's worth checking out.
@@EddieTheH
Thats natural ...due to the Granite... In the buildings and the underlying Geology..
Igneous rocks tend to be rich in metal ores ..radioactive elements... the other problem is Raydon gas getting trapped indoors as it rises up out of the rocks beneath ...
Cornwall/Dartmoor has the same problem.
Though igneous rocks dominate some areas like Bedfordshire also have hot spots due to clays that formed millions of years ago from the erosion of earlier igneous or volcanic rocks... radioactive isotopes can hang around for a very very long time.
The black sands are more than iron, use a magnet to separate the dark minerals between magnetic and non-magnetic. The non-magnetic minerals are probably zircon, a tough and heavy mineral that also can include thorium in the zircon crystal lattice, quite a bit sometimes. The abundant zircon minerals at the beach are probably a direct result of the erosion and transport of zircon, quartz and magnetite / hematite grains from the Sierra Nevada granitic batholith in the Sierra Nevada mountains, which contains abundant amounts of those minerals. Rivers transport them to the ocean and the wave action sorts the heavy minerals from the lighter, thus the band of dark sands. Winter storms, like the most recent in California tend to scour nearshore material and transport it to the beach, where it is sorted at the hightide wave. Placer deposits of gold on the beaches of Nome, Alaska, or placer titanium on the beaches south of Jacksonville, Florida are there for the same reason, erosion of large mountain ranges (Sierra Nevadas, Appalachians......) and transport to the sea, followed by concentration and transport by wave action nearshore and longshore. Also, zircons are nearly indestructible, they survive plate subduction and the melting of the rock around them, in fact growing larger, scrubbing more Zr and Th and U and Si from the magma.
I’m planning on separating out the sands to see if I can isolate the thorium bearing minerals.
That would be excellent. I’d love to see an episode on it.
The rivers from the Sierra Nevada all drain into San Francisco Bay, far from Southern California, but there are granites and metamorphic rocks in the Transverse Ranges of Southern California.
It'd be interesting to see how much ilmenite and other titanium minerals there were too...
Snow geese they nest in the arctic and fly back to bay area in fall
As a former sand miner, I can tell you that most beaches have a high radioactive reading.
Monazite (black sand) is the radioactive component.
Thorium should be the radioactive source.
When dredge runs, it’s digs through layers of different sands, then usually it settles close together because it is a much heavier material.
If you fill a bucket with rutile, you can’t lift it, the bucket will break even half full.
I believe it. That bag was much heavier than it looked.
That was my thought. The dredge brought up the sample and it was spread out.
There's a layer of Magnetite embedded in the cliff above a certain section of Ocean beach in San Francisco. It's black sand covers about a mile long section of the beach, park ranger told me its Magnetite...took some home and its magnetic alright. How many different types of black sand are there?
@@SpiritGirlSF That depends where you are in the world. I know of around 7 different sand minerals that are black. The black sands we extracted here were titanium dioxide, monazite, illmonite.
We also extracted zircon sand, but it’s white.
Those minerals help make jet engine parts, pacemakers, replaced lead in paint, cosmetics, tiles, glazing for tiles, sunscreen and more.
Thank you, I appreciate you answering me. Am wondering if Fukushima could be part of the cause of the radioactivity in this video.
When Heike Kamerlingh Onnes finally liquefied helium for the first time in 1908, he did it with helium obtained from this material at painstaking laborious cost. His brother Onno was director of the Commercial Information Office in Amsterdam, which allowed him to obtain monazite sand from the British Monazite Mine in Shelby, North Carolina. The large quantity of thorium in the sand made it valuable for manufacturing thorium mantles, used to increase the efficiency of lighting from kerosene lamps, but the hard grains of sand also locked in the helium produced by most steps of the the well known long thorium decay chain. The liquefaction of helium opened the door to the discovery of superconductivity, then superfluidity, and most recently the Higgs field (the LHC is cooled with superfluid helium) which is of course ultimate reason why your sand feels so heavy. Everything is connected.
Incredible thankyou for sharing that info.
All helium on earth is from radioactive alpha decay. So many people have no idea this is the case.
@@RadioactiveDrew True! but only for He4. Neglecting primordial origins for both, the trace He3 comes mainly from cosmic ray induced lithium fission and tritium beta decay - the tritium being a rare mode of uranium 235 decay.
@@Muonium1 So, *all* helium on earth comes from radioactive decay, just like RadioactiveDrew said. 😉
I thought that they obtained helium from natural gas.
That is actually pretty cool. I don’t think people realize just how easy it is to find radioactive minerals, so I’m glad you are showing stuff like this to also help people understand radiation is safer and more common than it seems.
Before I got into this I thought any amount of radiation was bad. But now after everything I’ve seen my thoughts on radiation and nuclear power has totally changed. I really enjoy doing these videos because I get to learn more as well.
@RadioactiveDrew any amount of radiation IS bad! All radiation is accumulative. That's why they limit the amount of X-rays you can get at the hospital. Radiation zips through your cells, creating a possibility for mutations and cancer.
@fionnmaccumhaill3257 that may be the case but the increase in radiation has nothing to do with that base or nuclear weapons.
I’ve gained an interest in radiation due to my time working in the oilfield. I directly worked with Americium -241 Beryllium, Cesium-137 and Thorium!
I think it’s important that you’re sharing the information you provide here on your channel!
No Good.... Sorry For You , By The Time You Understand, What Your Doing No Way Back From Your Cancer School Only Tell You What You Need To Know As You Find Out Sorry I Am On 3 Cancer From Nuclear Lies & My Kid's Grandkids Show Nuclear Damage Calvert Cliffs Manyland Nuclear Power Ran Wide Open & The Kids ALL Sick My Friend Up Street Got Leukemia & Die Me Thyroid SO Many Sick...& Never Well Again !!!!!! Internal Dose Stupid Nuclear People Of Greed Lies
@@FixItStupidyou sound like a crazy person
What and how is thorium used in well drilling??
We used thorium blankets to calibrate our neutron tools before lowering them in wells.
This allowed us to make sure we were getting the correct counts that were expected!
@FixitStupid you sound a bit off your rocker.
That magnet trick with the bottle is awesome!
It’s cool to see the magnetic field lines the sand makes.
You certainly did your due diligence and I appreciate you taking the extra time returning plus taking sand to analyze. New Subscriber and first time viewer 😘 im in Burbank California
Thanks...I use to live in Burbank and work at Warner Bros.
That's really cool, I would have never thought about the sand being a little bit hot with radioactive material. I bet if you were to pan that black sand, you would find some gold to.
That’s what other have said. Might have to give it a try.
During the 1960s, Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station was very active with ships transporting weapons to Vietnam and it held huge stores of left over WW-II equipment. It still has large underground storage today .
Oh I’m sure there is plenty still going on there.
@@RadioactiveDrew I take my grandson to the southern California beaches with a magnet and we collect that iron black sand. Fun science experiments. I've heard for decades about the radio activity at Seal Beach. It's become a bit of a forgotten local history. Great video!
Cool granddad
Imagine what they were shipping in the 30’s and 40’s
@@genericamerican7574 It would have been the late 40's on. The atom bomb was only a dream in the 30s and there were only two in existence in the mid-1940s, and those two were expended on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.
I used to work for a dredging company and when you started filming dredging equipment is when I got worried. Cutter suction, hopper, and and other form of hydraulic dredgers use density gauges that are semi-exposed to the moving material. Those metal and black, plastic pipes you filmed actually degrade very fast, especially when the material being dredged is rocky or sandy.
There were two radiological related incident reports I had to fill out where the incident revolved around unsafe work performed near the destiny gauge. We had two different sources on our dredges. Cesium 137 salts and cobalt 69. My biggest fear was somehow losing that source or somehow exposing the casing to moving material. Not many dredge personal are even aware about how insanely dangerous those sources can be.
Cesium-137 and Cobalt-60 can be very dangerous sources…if they are large enough. Usually those density gauges have a healthy amount of material in them.
@@RadioactiveDrew I was able to pick up readings as high as 200 microsievert/h with something as insensitive as a GammaScout while the source and gauge were fully installed. The cobalt 60 source was intense. And the way they are installed on these dredges is absolutely terrifying
Years ago dredging for Pier 400, we had a issue with the density gauges for sometime that required the manufacturer to come out to check the installation process. It was a concern for the deck crew and spill barge that a release had indeed occurred but to what extent. The issue was resolved rather quietly but questions persisted for some time, as the company never concluded exposure readings for personnel. The instrument/guage install had issues and probably shouldn't have been in service.
@tonsurton443 wow. I could see those gauges being a huge problem if they had their source installed wrong or were mishandled. That source that went missing out of a truck in Australia was a very interesting story.
@@RadioactiveDrew It really did freak me out when I saw how these housing assemblies were coupled to the dredge discharge line. For coastal restoration projects where the discharge is directly dumped back into the environment, a source breach would be a catastrophic nightmare. Hopper dredges generally contain all dredged material and is then discharged to another area.
I was actually concerned when you sat on that 24” discharge pipe in the video. Those lines are no joke. Lots of pressure and abrasive material going through them.
Ocean itself is fairly radioactive. Also whatever being eroded from midwest plateau (grand canyon) contains uranium and they get washed toward Los Angles basin.
❓❓Huh?
How does anything wash from the Grand Canyon to the SoCal beaches?
Maybe the Sea of Cortez, but that’s ’a far piece’ from Seal Beach.
Some stuff makes it out. But everything I was detecting was from some local deposit. This stuff is everywhere.
Especially after Fukushima discharge.
@jamesm.4426 has nothing to do with Fukushima.
@@RadioactiveDrew I was commenting on his assertion that the ocean was radioactive. I think you're talking about the beach deposits.
0:27 Isotope does not mean radioactive element. Some isotopes are radioactive (radioisotope), some are not. All atoms are isotopes of an element. Each element has a specific number of protons. The isotopes of each element have different numbers of neutrons with the same number of protons.
Good to know someone is checking these random areas to make sure that illegal dumping is not taking place. Keep up the good work!
At several of the SoCal beaches there are 55 gallon drums of radioactive material dumped off the coast. Family member saw the barrels in the 1970’s and 1980’s. The barrels were leaking then. Supposedly, the barrels were pulled up and taken to a proper containment facility, but that material that leaked out would still be there.
There used to be signs at the end of the jetties saying that there was radioactive materials out in the water as well.
wikipedia "From 1946 to 1970, the sea around the Farallones was used as a dump site for radioactive waste under the authority of the Atomic Energy Commission at a site known as the Farallon Island Nuclear Waste Dump. Most of the dumping took place before 1960, and all dumping of radioactive wastes by the United States was terminated in 1970. By then, 47,500 containers (55-gallon steel drums) had been dumped in the vicinity"
@markae0 I’ll have to look into this. But what was going on at this beach had nothing to do with dumping.
@@RadioactiveDrew It might have washed ashore carried by currents.
@@leopardwoman38it would be other isotopes if it had been nuclear waste.
@@thorwaldjohanson2526 The 55 gallon drums had nuclear waste symbols on them.
I really enjoy you taking us on this information gathering type of experience. Thanks for the education and sharing your knowledge.
No problem. Glad you enjoyed it.
Thoroughly enjoyed watching this video (as I do with all your videos). Thank you for all the efforts that go into producing these. Quite amazed at slightly radioactive beach sand, I had no idea it existed.
Glad you found it interesting. Thanks for the comment.
Hi Drew, great to see you doing a video somewhere I've been before! The birds the biologist were talking about are Snowy Plovers. They lay their eggs in dunes so places up and down the southern California beaches are often sectioned off for them. I'm up here in San Luis Obispo next to Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power plant, the last nuclear power plant built in the USA. They do scheduled tours sometimes. I'd love to see that on your channel!
Yep, dang Snowy Plovers, beach is closed a good portion of the year here in Lompoc
I would really like to do an in-depth couple of videos about Diablo Canyon.
Small world @flaviusFlav! I just left SLO (Cayucos specifically) for Los Alamos, NM last year! Buchon was a great trail and the tour is superb!
Awesome stuff, as usual. I giggled a bit when you decided not to film the interaction with the biologist, recalling your incident with the "old guy" that cussed you out in your TH-cam shorts lmao.
Yeah, that interaction is still in my mind.
Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station, used to store the Nuke weapons for the Navy's western fleet, if that might be a source. Also back in the 50's or 60's there was radioactive barrels dumped into the Santa Barbara channel just to the north. Keep up the good work
Glad you enjoyed the video.
That was a rumor. Also underground sub-pens. NWS SB has a submarine museum.The surface security is very limited. They also assembled bits of the space shuttle. The tower ar SB blvd and Westminster blvd was torn down. Iirc this was a wwii depo. Landed in SB in 1979, graduated Los Al in 91
Still definitely some weapons their
Wrong, Wrong, Wrong. Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station does not have the security systems in place for storage of nuclear materials. If you want to see where nuclear weapons are stored, go to Point Loma and look over at the end of the Coronado Peninsula. Where you see the triple fences with razor wire and continuous dog patrols is where the nukes are stored. My brother was a nuclear weapons certified Naval Aviation pilot and knew where the West Coast nukes were stored and Seal Beach was not on the list.
Beaches on the california coast that collect heavy sand during storms are the most radioactive, such as Fort Funston near SF. The radioactive mineral appears to be zircon but there are two different types. Under the microscope you can tell them apart, regular zircon grains are clear little crystals and the highly radioactive grains are more greenish and rounded looking. They are slightly more dense than regular zircon and can be separated by panning if you remove the magnetite and ilmenite with a magnet first. I concentrated a sample consisting of just a few grams of this supersand and it has an activity of around 1000cps on the radiacode, showing the thorium-232 peaks and possibly and little bit of uranium also.
I plan on removing the magnetite from the sand I have to see how that changes the radioactivity.
The more of the non zircon sand you can remove, the higher the readings you can achieve. Some of the samples I have processed have been as high as 70% magnetite so that can be a big help. The ilmenite tends to be pretty abundant also and can be removed with a magnet but its a bit more work - I did it by dropping it past a large magnet (similar to an hourglass) and that way you can sort between the slightly magnetic grains and the nonmagnetic grains. From my testing, all the radioactivity is contained in the zircons, a little bit in the regular zircon and the bulk of it in the greenish radiation damaged grains. If you can get rid of the magnetic grains, you can just pan the remains to get down to the radioactive fraction. Usually there is a little bit of gold mixed in as well but the best ive seen is only about 1 ppm.@@RadioactiveDrew
if there is a lot of quartz and other light minerals in your sand, panning might be a good way to start also
Hot damn someone put the "fun" in Fort Funston.
"Green" and "rounded" makes me think of olivine/peridot which is interesting. Unless it's actual "trinitite" although I have no idea how it was get to a beach in California. Rounded because of erosion of the grains, or rounded because of how it was formed (trinitite)?
Lordy I'd get a detector or three and jump right back into this hobby but am planning to move out to the middle of the Pacific in less than a year and will have to hold off until I'm all settled in and can get a detector then. Lots of oddball things are radioactive like old jewelry, pins, pottery, etc.
If I am not mistaken, that is Sunset Beach just north of Anderson and Pacific Coast Highway. I've occasionally walked that shoreline, and I've driven alongside it many thousands of times. Your video raises a question for me: How radioactive is gourmet sea salt as compared to run of the mill table salt (which, itself, may come from seawater)? Seawater includes many minerals such as calcium chloride, caesium chloride, potassium chloride, and even trace amounts of natural uranium.
I’ve never found radioactive salt. Salt substitute can be a little radioactive from the potassium.
Seal beach isn't sunset Beach. Other side of the naval base
The water tower in the background is at Sunset Beach.
Folly Beach South Carolina had 10k+ CPM just south of the pier. I took a small bottle of sand that puts out 1.2 k CPM. I found a government radiation survey that showed it as radioactive from a search by a plane. I walked about a mile up and down the beach and the whole thing is radioactive. Mostly Thorium.
That’s pretty cool. I’ll have to check out the location when I head out that way.
Interesting investigation Drew. Thank you for sharing and taking us along.
Glad you enjoyed the journey.
Well, if they're sucking the floor of the ocean. And you have that much black sand you should pan it for gold
Drew: this light is so shitty
Every other youtuber: OMG the light is perfect
Great vid.
I have standards I like to keep.
@@RadioactiveDrewthat is a breathe of fresh air my friend. 🤝🏻
You just showed up in my recommended and having seen the weird report about the sudden TFR over a base in the Pacific because of radiation with no explanation I had to watch. There are no coincidences.
@givemefreedom2359 a friend of mine sent me something about that. I want to say it was some kind of fluke. But I need to look into it further.
Fascinating video. Glad you got to learn about sand dredging. Blew my mind when I learned our beaches are mostly fake.
Drew, I'd love to see you go to Santa Susana Pass and scope that out (there was a radiological accident there decades ago, and I honestly don't think it was ever fully cleaned up)
I’ve been to Santa Susana a couple of times and hiked around. I plan on doing a video about the location hopefully this year.
According to the Government Box Canyon is considered the number one most contaminated area in the USA. The nuclear meltdown contaminated the Chatsworth Reservoir which they drained (where was that water discharged?) and they scraped the soil up, put it into open trucks, drove it into the desert and dumped it somewhere. So you have the canyon, the pass with Chatsworth on one side and Simi Valley on the other, water discharged somewhere (sewers? Ocean?) and a major dump in the desert (Mohave? Death Valley? Joshua Tree?) . When they had the fire a couple of years ago in West Hills they were freaking out because it burning brush growing in the radiation area. The fire fighters were compromised.
@@aliceputt3133 well they're wrong or you misunderstood their fears. Chemical exposure is the number one threat in that area...not radiological.
@@RadioactiveDrew Common problem. Some un-educated folks here locally still get all paranoid and freaked out every time there is a natural cover fire anywhere on the Hanford Site. About 580+ square miles of sagebrush, tumbleweeds, and cheat grass with summer temps over 100F common, so you will have fires along WA 240 (cigarette butts out the car windows) and just about every time we get a decent thunderstorm.
There are monitor stations on and all around the Hanford Site, and never an increased rad count due to an NCF. Particulate counts from the smoke are a different story. Unfortunately, the local media loves to run stories like "HANFORD AIR MONITORING SHOWS INCREASED COUNTS" to lure readers. Last one of those I saw, it was indeed the PARTICULATE count, possible related to the dust storm which reduced visibilities to under 1/4 mile for most of the region.
I carry a personal dosimeter and happen to work out that way. Highest dose rate I ever saw recorded was on a day off. The wife and I had a discussion about never again setting a fresh bunch of bananas next to my dosimeter while it is charging on the kitchen counter...
@@aliceputt3133 - No NUKES! And Ban the BOMB! Please!!
I would like to see the levels on Topsail Island in North Carolina. Operation Bumblebee was the sole use of the island from 1947 until they moved the project to White Sands Missile Range in 1951.
Though no nuclear testing occurred there, the island is directly south of numerous military installations surrounding Jacksonville, NC including Marine Corps Air Station New River and Camp Lejeune. I would not be surprised if some contamination occurred through the years.
Also, you should pan a sample of that sand out for gold. Many times (though not always), sands with large hematite and iron content also contains flour gold.
I’ve seen some gold colored specs in the sand. Might just be pyrite. I’m planning to separate out the sand to try and isolate, the radioactive thorium along with the iron.
Yep. Look for that black sand. I'm further north by VSFB and the beach in this area was a mining district for a brief period, until it was clear it wasn't cost efficient to extract it from the sand. It's there though
There’s a place called Radium Springs in Albany Ga that has traces of amounts of naturally occurring radium in the water there that would probably be an interest to you to check out
It’s on my list of places to check out.
We have a Radium Springs here in New Mexico as well. It's just up the road from me.
@escuelaviejafarms I’ve been to a town in Canada called Radium Hot Springs. The hot springs with the same name has water that is slightly radioactive.
That dark spot is def from oil and those dredge pipes suck all that up and the offshore oil platforms also leak out into the ocean then gets sucked up and deposited to your local beaches
I was a US Marine Corps Infantryman stationed at Camp Pendleton in the 80's. I was more worried about getting dosed from the nuclear power plant while swimming at the beach at San Onofre. Did you ever check the sands there at those beaches when you were at the plant?
Ive checked it... its running at 40. Low
I walked the beach and the front of the power station and found no increase in radiation.
Theres giant garibaldi the size of a bus swimming around San Onofre and they aren't orange they're purple and glow in the dark, and can cut you to pieces just by looking at you with their laser eyes.
It's a weird phenomenon but leakage from the power plant melted the clothes off of gross old guys just south of it around Trail 6.
@mikel5582 well that didn’t happen. Not sure if that was some kind of joke.
Little by little we learn the hidden principles that make up our magnificent world. Piece by piece we transform our puzzle to a magnificent picture. 🌞🌞🌞
I'm thinking you would make a great science teacher. Your explanation was easy to understand, and I was riveted by your presentation.
Thanks. I think these videos reach far more people than if I was to teach some of this subject in a class. Plus I really like being out in the field.
Monazite (Th) and its decay products are quite common in beach sand.
It can be concentrated due to disposal after beach sand mining, particilarly where the rare earths (rutile, gold etc) are separated using gravity tables. Under mining and nuclear regulatory rules the separated monazite (Th) is supposed to be scattered back to nature at the low water mark. However, wave action can reconcentrate this material due to its high specific gravity.
In some places (notably southern India) the background can be high enough to risk health problems from prolonged exposure.
I dunno man... Proposition 65 warns everyone that "life" is known to be cancer causing in the state of California!😁
You got a point there.
I don’t know who the fuck thought that was a brilliant idea to pass prop 65 🤦🏻♂️
Known to the state of cancer to cause California
@@deeeezela bureaucrat
Dumb comment.
Those oil fields just put into perspective for myself why I would always come home from Zuma beach with tar stuck to the bottom of my feet that was impossible to remove with soap and water alone. Great little deep dive here, taught me a lot I never thought to even ask questions about as a California native.
I remember playing on the beach in Ventura and getting tar stuck on my feet. Doesn't seem to happen as much as it use to but I also very rarely find myself down by the beach.
You should check out George Airforce Base, now Southern California Logistics Airport. They used to decontaminate the planes that flew through the Nevada Nuclear test site.
That would be a cool place to check out. I’ll put it on the list.
Look up the airplane graveyard in adelanto ca and that is one of the decontamination sites that they use to rinse the airplanes off at after they were flown through the nuclear blasts at the test site.
You can find all of the radioactive contamination sites on the maps that are provided on epa superfund site for George airforce base
Gee, do you think it has anything to do with them storing toxic waste right next to the water tables, and releasing a little into the ocean every now and then?
Literally, all you had to do was some paper research, you didn't need to go and actually pick up the radiation on your body.
Soon after the Fukushima event, someone found a beach in Norcal, Pacifica or Half Moon Bay, not sure now which, that had much higher radioactivity, that also turned out to be thorium. AT the time, everyone was freaking out that it's from Japan, as unlikely as it would have been to happen so quickly.
china puts out far more radiation than japan
The radioactive stuff that came from Japan floated across the ocean in mats of tsunami debris. Rains and waves had washed the debris with water, but around these mats of floating debris mini ecosystems form with algae and plankton growing and reproducing in them. The biological material had absorbed a higher than background radiation level from cesium isotopes washed off the debris.
uNlIkElY
@@rtqii It was too quick for that, plus it was thorium, which reactors don't produce.
@@Krakondack Yeah radioactive sand did not come from Japan.
So relieved to know I can safely keep eating my thorium sand lol. Fascinating video!
The magnetic field lines at 17:20 are quite educative. Although Thorium is not magnetic, Nickel and Cobalt are. Speaking of Cobalt, its Cobalt-60 isotope is a strong gamma emitter, doing so via complex process. In the past there have been cases of rebar steel contamination.
Cobalt-60 is a man made isotope and doesn’t occur naturally. Usually items that become contaminated with Co-60 are ones that are made with steel that has become contaminated at a scrap yard from a source of Co-60 that was melted down by mistake.
As Always, Great Work Drew!!! Thank you so much!!
Glad you enjoyed the video and thanks for the comment.
Some beaches in my home state of Queensland are "hot" with naturally occurring rutile and ilmenite. These minerals are mostly titanium dioxide, but contain traces of uranium and thorium.
Australia has some very big deposits of uranium.
I do remember reading an article in the Los Angeles Times discussing about over 20 years of radioactive waste dumped in the LA County and Ventura County Area. The waste extended from hospitals to WW2 warships dumping: radio active chemicals, barrels, bombs, and ammunition waste during the 1940-1960s. The article also mentions the radioactive material dumped as close to 150ft off of the coast.
Several beaches in France and the Camargue are a little radioactive because there is thorium in very small grains. At first the researchers thought of a leak at the Tricastin nuclear power plant and the Pierrelatte reprocessing center, which are on the banks of the Rhône, which could have released radioactive products which ended up in the sea just towards the mouth of the Rhône.
Other beaches near Cap D'Agde are slightly radioactive listed by the ASN and the IRSN.
Add another location on the list of places to visit in California with my Geiger counter. You always peak my interests with the locations you visit. Great video! Sorry for your loss too btw.
Glad you enjoyed the video and I hope you get to check out the beach. Thanks, my Grandpa was a fun guy.
Would be interesting to learn what is in that sand. High thorium usually means lots of nice rare-earth minerals (commonly found in monazite sands). Ever tried concentrating or extracting the thorium? Just magnetically removing the iron would be a good start to the separation.
I’m planning on separating out the magnetite from the sand to see if I can isolate the thorium bearing material.
Interesting video. My local beach is about 60 miles south of there and is typically covered in vast mounds of rocks ranging up to softball or football-sized. My mind is always blown by the tremendous variety of rock types there, suggesting a wide range of geological origins that somehow got washed up into these massive heterogeneous piles.
There's also been so much human activity along the Southern California Bight (military, oil wells, petroleum refineries, power plants, run-off of pollution from a few million cars, etc.) that nothing surprises me. I find the oddest stuff buried among rocks during low tides: fishing reels, GoPro camera, lawn chairs, and lots of nautical rope. The massive amount of wave energy shaping this shoreline is incredible.
This beach is actually man made! It was built for the weapons station, and sand is dumped to replenish the beach every five years so the sand is more fine than most beaches in the area because I think they take the sand from deep in the ocean
Cool stuff! I was close to there in December at Newport Beach, makes me regret not bringing some sand home
I’ve looked at Newport Beach for this same sand but I didn’t find any. I’m sure it’s up and down the coast in little pockets. So far Seal Beach at Sunset Beach for sure has this sand.
One of the biggest reasons that beaches need replenishment is radio-head youtubers hauling off the beach baggie by baggie. 😉Thanks Drew for the great videos and quality photography.
No problem. Glad you enjoyed it.
Drew, very cool video! This could be tailings from all of the oil drilling activity in the early 20th century; a TH232 deposit deep underground. Perhaps, because of its higher specific gravity, the material could be early oil drilling mud (containing residual TH232) that was used to stabilize the bore holes. Please keep the videos coming!
The thorium could have totally come from the oil drilling. But it also might be from a natural deposit that is eroding into the ocean.
As usual, this was a great video of discovery of radiation around us. You did a fantastic job of editing/producing while adding music.
I don't know if you've been to the Columbia River but that would be a place to go to check for radiation. If it is, the plume coming from the Handford Nuclear Plant and going down the coast.
I was at the Columbia River over the summer and did a video about Hanford and how it’s similar to what is going on with Fukushima.
Here’s the video. Contamination Worse than Fukushima that No One Knows About
th-cam.com/video/CdY2dhe3StM/w-d-xo.html
@@RadioactiveDrew
Cool, I'll check it out.👍
15:59 might be an idea to have a radon detector on your ground floor if on such geology, would only need ventilation to mitigate. Recall seeing another video refuting that contamination from Fukushima was to blame for radiation on the Pacific coast but that host mentioned that it was from thorium in the sand, guess he filmed not far from where you were.
Thorium was my first thought when you used beach and radiation in the same sentence.
There used to be a sign on the jetty there telling people to stay away because there was apparently radioactive waste dumped there many years ago.
The sign was apparently removed by a storm many years ago. I heard the barrels were removed back in the mid or late 1980s.
This additional radiation isn’t from dumping. It’s a naturally occurring radioactive material.
I remember watching TH-cam videos in 2011, right after the Japanese tsunami and Fukushima meltdowns, when people would bring cheap geiger counters to this California beach and blame Fukushima for the radioactive 'contamination' 🤣
Yes & It Did, Come... Still Comes In The Hydrological Cycle You Know ? Cancer The Cancer Rate
I live by the beach in Northern California and we had debris from Japan wash up. Mostly stuff from fishing boats. There’s a city an hour north that had a tsunami take it out in 1964 because of an earthquake in Alaska. We had a mini tsunami hit a few years ago from a similar situation.
17:20 Whaaat?? That is so cool! I've lived there all my life and I've never tried that. Now I know what we're doing this weekend!
Glad I could show you something new.
I'm sorry that it was a funeral that brought you out here. Is the thorium present as separate particles, or is it bound in the iron and/or sand? If you separate the iron out into another container, would the measured radiation from the iron and sand containers be significantly different?
I’m going to do just that. I have some switchable magnets coming that should make that process a little easier.
Switchable magnets are really cool. Even though their operating principle is pretty simple, they still feel like magic.
@Nf6xNet that’s why I’m excited to get a pair of them.
@@RadioactiveDrew I think you may want to put them in bags while using them to prevent direct contact with the iron particles. When I used a switchable magnet dial indicator holder while machining cast iron, it got crud inside and developed a gritty feel.
@Nf6xNet I’m planning on not having the sand in direct contact with the magnet.
My Grandmother had a house on Seal Beach in the mid 1960's. Back then, there were few houses on the beachside of the street because the shore line was right there; the houses on that side of the street were on pier pilings so the high tides and storm tides could wash under them. During storms the water would even cross the street and up to the houses on the opposite side of the street. In the late 1960's they started to pump sand out onto the beach - this took a couple of years. They extended the beach out at least 200 yards - maybe 300. Total trip dude! the pipe had to be 3 feet high, and they created a giant hill that ran the entire length of the shoreline. That hill was as tall as a house, and they then pushed the hill out even further.
Seal Beach had one of the best breaks - a surfer's paradise for sure. I grew up with a pool in the backyard, so I could swim like a fish. My folks would not let me have a surfboard - I was too young, but body surfing was off the chain down there! In 1970 or 71 her house burnt down; we were all out to lunch and came home just in time to save a few things and watch it burn to the ground. Really sad too, GrandMa's house was deck-out to the 9's with beach stuff - SoCal was a great place to grow-up back then.
One other note about back then; you could see 2 or 3 offshore oil rigs off of Long Beach out in the bay. When we came in off the beach, we had to check our feet for tar. We used Trichloroethylene 1.1.1 (I think) to clean the tar off our feet; it was some type of solvent that dissolved the tar, with a little rubbing. So, take that into consideration of your findings.
So far it seems like the thorium deposits aren’t correlated with oil wells. I say that because there are loads of wells that use to exist in Huntington Beach but I haven’t found the same thorium deposits. In Seal Beach / Sunset Beach there aren’t any old oil wells…at least looking at the records I’ve found.
Living down by the beach can be quite an experience. I use to live in Costa Mesa for a couple years and always enjoyed going down to the Huntington Beach area to skate at the park.
Sorry to hear about your grandmother’s house.
I was a kid in so cal during the 70’s… it was amazing. We used baby oil and cotton balls to get the tar off. Good times.
Well it's not exactly radioactive, but there are thousands upon thousands of 55 gallon drums full of DDT and lord knows else that were dumped off the California coast, so honestly a lil bit of thorium is probably the least of people's worries
Bingo. Actually it is not DDT but radioactive medical waste from ~WW. Several 10,000s barrels.
So cool . . . One of my favorite places. Nice tasteful demo of the Radicode.
Glad you got to come down to SoCal again!
Based on the little map you showed, you might have been on sunset beach - seal beach is a stones throw away on the other side of the tiny anaheim harbor. Also not to confuse San Diego natives, he's not talking about the beach on silver strand navy seals train on locally known as SEAL beach 😝
The city limits there are very close and confusing. Yes I was at Sunset Beach for most of the video.
@@RadioactiveDrew Anaheim is a nightmare to navigate, and as you stated, it has a very "dirty" history. I wouldn't be surprised at all if anyone watched this and went to the neighboring seal beach and found similar readings and interesting heavy sand as well. They're so close to each other, only separated by that tiny bay. If it is a result of the old oil facilities or weapon storage, it could paint many of the surrounding beaches.
@owenspiva next time I’m down there I plan on spending more time building a radiation map of the beaches.
@@RadioactiveDrew do it in the summer and freak out all the tourists with the instrument tones. 😂
@owenspiva it’s not as fun as you might think. Most of the time people are extremely curious about what I’m doing. I like to explain what’s going on and all that explaining eats into filming.
A couple comments... First off, I own a 103, and it's the most fantastic detector built. I;ve actually given the company some ideas that they have implemented in the product, but I don't work for them (I'm not paid by them). But they are really nice and very receptive about their product.
They are releasing a more sensitive version, the 103G on May 24th, 2024, so if you want to buy one you might want to hold out for that version.
About 20 years ago I took a class offered by the Civil Defense organization for detecting radiation. It didn't cost anything, but you had to agree to provide the government with radiation readings if the country gets nuked. Not sure what infrastructure existed for me to supply this information, but I'm probably in yet another government database... And my amateur radio license wouldn't hurt in that case, if I did survive. All kind of like a science fiction movie to think about.
Anyway, I don't know if the Civil Defense department still exists (probably part of Homeland Security now), but if the classes are still available it's definitely worth taking.
I think I would have reported that hot spot to the city. I know it's not immediately dangerous to passers by. But, as I learned in the class, danger comes from 3 things: Time, Distance and Dose. The Dose is rather high, add time and distance to the equation and it could be a problem. If someone picked that particular spot and laid over it all day long soaking in the sun they would get a sunburn, but they would also get more radiation than they should. It's always best to receive as little radiation as possible. And the problem is, unless you have the equipment to measure it, you'll never know you are being exposed to it.
Also, ingesting radioactive compounds can be bad because of the close distance and long duration (Time and Distance). Some things can't be helped, like potassium. But it doesn't hurt to avoid as much as possible. Especially when you are young.
I love your videos Drew, so does my nephew. I live in Calgary (neighbour) but grew up on the ocean in Vancouver. I think its cute how the midwest people think a giant wave is going to get them when on the beach, as its unfamiliar to you. 😄 Same with my Alberta friends. 😅 Keep up the fantastic videos!
Excellent video drew!
Thanks.
Excellent video and quite interesting! ❤ I suspected you would identify Thorium. - Btw, I found a set of three old aircraft instruments on eBay for 85 bucks that should be here on Monday. Two of them look to be from the era of radium painted dials and similar to yours. The collection is growing.
Those dials are some of my hottest items. Make sure to check and see if they are leaking. Most have radium daughters on the outside from the radon escaping.
Thanks Drew ✌🏽another great show ‼️👍
So did I. Some beaches are known for Thorium-containing monazite sands.
I had an old windup alarm clock that had glowing hands. Had to warn the person who I gave it to.
Turned on my Radiacode 102 on a recent international flight I took from North America to Asia, it was reading about 700 cpm at cruising altitude of 40,000 feet. When I got to our hotel room in Taiwan, it measured 600 cpm! I have not had time to analyze the isotopes yet.
The famous spate of buildings accidentally using cobalt 60 contaminated steel (likely from a melted down medical source) that happened there decades ago may warrant a closer look.
@@Muonium1 Yes, there was a large building complex in Taiwan that used contaminated iron rebar. There is a good article in Wikipedia under a title like radioactive accidents. The people who lived in those buildings were studied over 10 years as I remember and had a very low incidence of cancer compared to people who live in normal background areas. It’s called the hormesis effect, and Wikipedia has a great article on that as well (in fact that may be where I learned about the contamination in Taiwan).
can you provide an in depth review of the differences between Radiacode102, 103, and 103G?
I'm working on a Radiacode 103G video right now. The difference between the 103G and the 101, 102, 103 are the biggest. That's because they have a new detector in the 103G. Instead of being made from Cesium Iodine, its a GAGG crystal. GAGG stands for Gadolinium, Aluminum, Gallium, Garnet. This crystal gives better gamma resolution, is more sensitive and is a little more robust than the other CsI crystal.
Could the beach widening dredging be pumping the material onto the beach?
Yes , There Pumping In The Right Spot To Find The Navy Dump...And So Much Dumped In The Sea @ 31 CPM
Surfside and sunset beach have dredged for decades to replace lost sand. The monazite sand is heavier so when dredged up gets washed. It's sort of like gold planning, but the ocean waves do the work.
Thorium is chill. Would love to see more application of thorium reactors. A boy can dream
Actually, contamination is simply radioactive material where you don't want it. I totally get Drew's assessment of the relative lack of risk, but the beach is technically contaminated with thorium.
Yes, you could make the argument that the thorium is a contaminant. But since the thorium is older than the earth wouldn’t the earth be contaminating the thorium?
Huh
If that "sewage" sign came from the same place, the thorium might have been dumped down a drain.
@@RadioactiveDrew lol big one earth isotope appeared somewhere and hit the the thorium floating in space contaminating a bunch of thorium
@RadioactiveDrew I'm just repeating the industry standard definition. Thorium was moved onto the beach where there was none before. Thorium is radioactive, and in spite of it being NORM, it represents a measurable albeit small hazard. If someone dumped radioactive sand on my driveway, I would consider it contaminated. My assessment is based on more than 40 years of dealing with radioactive materials including direct interactions with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. I know what I'm talking about. Instead of being defensive, perhaps you should take this an opportunity to learn. I learn something watching all of your videos even though you were a novice up until recently. I'm not sure why you don't have a similarly open mind to input of others.
@7:18. That's instantly recognizable to me. When I was a kid I spent summers on the Great Lakes, mainly Lake Michigan along the Southeastern shore in IN and MI and I remember the Army Corps of Engineers doing dredging and beachfront augmentation almost constantly.
I would have guessed uranium, because that sand comes both naturally and trucked in from our uranium rich deserts. Thorium isn't surprising, it's everywhere like uranium.
Its uranus
Very informative video. I am from southern Calif. and I was aware of the oil fields back in the early 1900’s but what I wasn’t aware of was that there was no regulations on how to close down a oil well back then until the 1930’s and the 1940’s. Which I believe they started to feel up the wells with cement once a well was in no more use. But before then some were just covered over with sand, or dirt without sealing it up in a proper regulated manner so gases were escaping . I think a most recent case was in Encino , Ca when someone uncovered a cement cover in recent years and I believe it was dangerous gases were escaping. But the cost in the video was said to cost 1 million dollars to pump cement into these wells now and Los Angeles has started to try to close some of these. There is a map of wells in Southern California. Being in use , closed properly and not closed properly. So I would think some radiation might be leaking from these. Sorry this was a long post.
There is a very informative map about old wells in the area. Don’t have the link right now. But I think a quick search would find it. The radiation isn’t coming from these old wells. It’s naturally occurring radioactive material in the sands. Plenty of areas around the world have the same thing. Some have much higher levels of radiation.
I've been going to this beach since the '50's and it has been eroding into the sea for many years. It begins near the jetty and so the state replenishes the sands by pumping offshore sand onto the beach through those rusty pipes. So most of the area you checked, down to 20 feet or more, is from offshore sand. The Naval Weapons Station stores any and all naval weapons but does no production of nuclear materials. Further down the beach is the San Obispo Nuclear Power Station, long a symbol for the coastal cities, especially Hunting Beach. Then there has been some debris that washed ashore from Japan. But the rediation MOST likely comes from all the oil industry drilling and pumping along the coast and natural materials from the area.
Drew your 100% the reason I have a Radiacode. Hands down the coolest radiation detector I own, which isn’t much but still.
The Radiacode is a great tool to have. I use mine everywhere I go and sometimes it picks up on things my other detectors miss. Also the mapping function is extremely useful.
That base was at one point one of the main ammo stores for the pacific fleet. Until the mid to late 90s, it certain security features that would suggest storage of nuclear weapons but after a big sand erosion mediation project in which trains were running in and out of it for several weeks, many of those security features were reduced. Rumor was the trains were removing the weapons under the guise of bringing in sand. There have also been rumors of a submarine dock there with an underwater entry and a tunnel system that connected the Boeing site across Bolsa Chica (which is also gone these days... it was McDonnel-Douglass's R&D center farther back). The beaches in that area have had a lot of erosion issues over the last 30 or so years, with the homes in the background almost getting hit by particularly high tides that come with strong winter storms. Before the dought of the last decade, it was typical to see news footage of 6-8 ft berms being built up as a makeshift sea wall to prevent sea water from reaching them. I hadn't heard about the dredging project. That seems like a likely source of your readings. There are also a lot of oil deposits in the area that could be the source of the material, and there has been a lot of dumping in the coastal waters around there over the years that would not be at all acceptable today but was common until the 70s. I've heard of drums of various really nasty chemicals being discovered. It wouldn't shock me to hear of radioactive material on those seafloors, either naturally occurring or not.
Since you are in Montana, have you ever looked into possible radiation sources in the mining districts of Silver Bow and Deer Lodge counties? I recall you had a find along the Gallatin river. Maybe back around George Town lake. Or even some of the abandoned placer mines just south of Helena. Maybe attached your counter to a fishing line and drop it down some of those mines.
Back in the '60s, a builder got hold of some contaminated and slightly radioactive steel girders. I soon discovered that any network cable that was too close to them didn't work right. I spent months trying to figure it out. I thought the steel was magnetized. I finally figured it out after a few years. We moved out in the 90s, and the building was condemned.
First time visitor. Subscribed. Thanks!
Thanks for the sub.
The things you do is very interesting. I like all the information you give about radiation too. My fav videos are the ones you hunt for collection items on markets and stores. Stay save brother. Keep up your hard work. Love from the Netherlands 💪
i enjoy your video's and the way you present things Drew thank you
I’m glad you enjoy them.
Great stuff Drew. Thanks again for the video
No problem. Glad you enjoyed it.
Hey, sorry it took me so long to find your channel! Excellent presentation. Thank you! (Liked and subbed)
Glad you found the channel. Thanks for the sub.
One of the problems we have in New Jersey, when they do beach replenishment, is “Toxic Mud.” Due to all of the illegal dumping that has been done in the New York waterways, and industrial effluent that was unregulated before the EPA, there are areas that have bottoms that, if disturbed, will release all kinds of harmful compounds. Now they have to do surveys in the areas they want to dredge to ensure they aren’t working in those areas.
Wow those historic photos of people just going about their day at the beach with all those oil derricks behind them is just wild to see. Very informative video and your data could be relevant for future researchers too! ✌️
I think there is more to that area. I only explored it for maybe two hours. Planning to go back soon and do a whole day or two.
If you put your big magnet on the outside of a plastic bucket and fill it with water, then slowly pour the sand in the water close to the magnet but not too close, the iron ore will cling to the side of the bucket and the non-magnetic stuff (containing thorium?) will drop to the bottom. Then you can separate them and see if the radioactivity goes up for either the non-magnetic or magnetic material.
Thanks for that idea. I’ll have to give it a shot and see how it works out.
I knew what those pipes were because I had it explained to me in exactly the same way that you did, I walked up and asked the guys working on it. Also, there were biologists there too but I think they were monitoring shellfish. This was down in the southeast on the gulf of mexico.
It’s awesome that those guys are so cool with questions.
Beautiful lighting :)
Thanks.
Have you had a chance to go to the Rocketdyn Santa Susana Field Laboratory? Also, supposedly the old Rockwell plant in Downey if parts of it are still left.
I’ve hiked around Santa Susana but didn’t find anything of note, radiation wise. I’ll have to check out Downey next time I’m down there.
@@RadioactiveDrew the Downey Rockwell plant had a incident then moved research to Canoga Park
www.etec.energy.gov/Library/Downey.php
The outfall of the San Gabriel and Another major river or flood control outfall for many hundreds of square miles of land is just up north past the Seal Beach pier about two miles north of where you were, it would be interesting to see what the Radiacode data would show if someone walked upriver and see if the counts change.
On a separate topic to the reading but still on the topic of the RadiaCode 102 and 103 - On the Radiacode App map view it shows color coded barely visible dotted communications tracer lines - I think from networking node to node, sometimes for miles on the map. I still don't know exactly what they are I think maybe peer to peer mesh nodes? One I traced seemed to lead to a small satellite dish on a water tank on top of a hill near my home. These appear different from the ones you showed which are the round dots that indicate the paths walked. Sometimes the dotted lines lead to cars both moving and parked so I suspect they include cellphone traffic
Pretty sure this radioactive sand is coming from the beach and nothing up the river outflow…if that’s what you were referring to.
In 1955, the US Navy detonated a Mark 90 nuclear bomb about 500 miles SW of San Diego in the Pacific Ocean, Operation Wigwam. The device was exploded at 2000 below the water surface . The detonation was done to test use of nuclear bombs as a depth charge to sink submarines. The ocean current along the California coast run from north to south, the currents may not have carried radioactive material to Seal Beach. Still, it is surprising to learn of the test location.
What I was detecting there at the beach came from natural radioactive sources...thorium-232.
A cool little history fact about NWS Seal Beach, they built the second stage of the Saturn V there.
Drew do you have a photography background? I mean you are shooting at golden hour but frame rate to shutter seems on par, what are you shooting 24 fps?
Sorry to go all ADD on you. Interesting stuff indeed. I'm about halfway through this video as of this comment. This is my first time viewing any of your content and it's done well. (coming from a full time professional photographer, videographer and editor) Mainly referencing the first third of this before you go to iphone. Ironic I just got back from a photo/video assignment in Missoula.
Zircon and monazite are certainly the most common thorium-containing beach minerals; though I'd expect to see more uranium-series isotopes in the former. Two other Th-containing minerals common in the watershed include allanite and xenotime. As a geology professor who lives nearby, I'm tempted to have a student run some mineral separations and analyses on these sands for a little geology research project. Fun fact: the radioactive content of these minerals also makes them great targets for radiometric dating, to see how old the rocks that spawned them were.
I’ve heard of zircon crystals being used to date some of the oldest rocks. It’s a super interesting topic that I would like to cover in a video. So many people have only heard of carbon dating.
Very interesting video! When I first saw the title I worried that maybe the recent storms and big waves had pulled up the radioactive waste from barrels dumped out there from the 50s and 60s although it was supposed to have been pretty deep but you never know. Glad it’s not that, yet.
When I was stationed at George AFB back in the late 80s- early 90s, a team found VERY HIGH radioactive top soil all over certain areas of the taxi ways especially the engine trim pads and maintenance pads. Turns out that back in the days of atomic testing planes flying the area would land and be washed off contaminating much of the ground which remained. When we were running engines on these pads we were unknowingly blowing the contaminated desert sand all over! The pads were shutdown the area fenced off and in 1993 the base was closed. It was supposed to be turned over to the community for development which never happened, Hollywood used some parts of the old base in various movies and tv shows briefly ( The first Incredible Hulk movie, JAG, etc) when more radioactive contamination was found it was abandoned! People in the area of Adelanto and Victorville have a higher rate of cancers because of this and the ground water contamination!
I'll have to look into this AFB a bit more. Thanks for letting me know about it.
Very cool uplad, Drew - thank you.
Glad you enjoyed it.
Very interesting. The second you said iron was in the sand I was hoping you would use a magnet 😊.
Interesting video from my backyard! In 1962 the US Navy conducted a life fire exercise of a nuclear armed ASROC depth charge 300 miles off San Diego. Your mention of sand dredging makes me wonder if they are pumping up layers of contaminated sand from the 1962 test.
That would be possible if I was detecting other isotopes from nuclear tests. But I was finding thorium 232, which is a naturally occurring isotope.
@@RadioactiveDrew Great to hear! So I will not be expecting Godzilla to be stomping Seal Beach flat anytime soon.