Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators, or RTGs (sometimes incorrectly called Nuclear Batteries) are usually utilized in deep space exploration.
But during the 1970s and 1980s, during the height of The Cold War, The Soviet Union manufactured over 2500 terrestrial RTGs to power its unmanned Lighthouses and Radio Navigation Beacons on the Northern Arctic seaboard, or deployed in the USSR’s remotest hinterland rural regions.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, all these highly dangerous, intensely radioactive devices were simply abandoned in situ, and left to rot for the next 2 decades…. until they started to kill people in the 21st century, with Acute Radiation Exposure. This finally caused the international community to start to take the hazard they posed seriously.

This 30 min video is a documentary on the reasons the Soviet Engineers chose to use dangerous Radioisotope Thermal Generators to power equipment, the technology and nuclear physics behind them, with the help of Matt Damon in the movie ‘ The Martian’ (2015) .
We explore some Abandoned Places in the Former Soviet Union that are still home to decaying RTGS , such as Aniva Lighthouse, on Russia’s Sakhalin Island.

This detector project uses two Cosmic Array Detectors that I had designed for a light and sound installation for the 2017 Splash Adelaide festival. However, in this design, I am creating a 3 + 3 channel system to provide six channels of polyphonic sound.

It is time to take a closer look at some foods that are often said to be radioactive: bananas and brazil nuts.
How active are they in reality? And why would they even be radioactive in the first place?
Can I find something way more active and still edible in a grocery store?
Let’s find out!

ESP8266 Geiger counter
Simple Geiger counter using ESP8266 PWM for HV generation and network connectivity
https://hackaday.io/project/12933-esp8266-geiger-counter

Being an absolute noob as to building HV devices and radiation measurement devices in particular this project is dedicated to research. So prototypes will have lots of flaws, but I’ll try to keep a log about findings and this page will continuously be updated.