Radioactive@home

Radioactive@Home
Project
Status	Active
Category	Environmental science / Citizen science
Compute	NCI (sensor-based, non-CPU-intensive)
Requires	Hardware radiation sensor (USB Geiger counter)
Development
Developer	Krzysztof Piszczek
Author	Krzysztof Piszczek
Sponsor	BOINC@Poland / BOINC Polska Foundation
Maintainer	BOINC@Poland
Initial release	2011
Software
Written in	C
Operating system	Windows, Linux, Raspberry Pi (Raspbian/Debian Wheezy), Linux/MIPS, Linux/A20-OLinuXino, armv5tel Linux
Metadata
Website	http://radioactiveathome.org/boinc/
License	GPL (GNU General Public License)

BOINC project Radioactive@home is a volunteer computing project that needs your help to document gamma radiation levels.

Why Radioactive@home?

Ionizing radiation is invisible to human senses, yet it is present everywhere on Earth - emanating from rocks, soil, building materials, cosmic rays, and occasionally from industrial or nuclear sources. Governments typically operate sparse networks of radiation monitors at fixed locations, leaving vast geographic gaps in public knowledge of local radiation conditions. A single unexpected nuclear accident, radiological incident, or gradual contamination from an aging facility can go undetected for extended periods in areas with no monitoring infrastructure.

Gamma radiation in particular can penetrate building materials and travel long distances, making it the most relevant form of environmental radiation for population-wide monitoring. Naturally occurring background gamma radiation typically delivers doses of approximately 1.5 to 3.5 millisieverts (mSv) per year to most people worldwide, though the global average is approximately 2.4 mSv/year. Some localities - such as parts of Iran, India, and Brazil - can see doses exceeding 50 mSv/year from natural terrestrial sources alone.

The 1986 Chernobyl disaster and the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster demonstrated how rapidly radioactive contamination can spread across wide regions, and how crucial rapid, distributed ground-level monitoring is for public safety. Radioactive@Home was conceived and launched directly in response to this need for dense, citizen-powered, continuous radiation monitoring.

Goal

The main goal of the project is to create a free and constantly updated map of radiation available for all people, by gathering information about gamma radiation using dedicated hardware sensors connected to computers of volunteers. The resulting data is published openly at no cost, providing a publicly accessible radiation atlas that can be used by researchers, journalists, local authorities, and concerned citizens alike.

Unlike most BOINC projects, which harness unused CPU or GPU cycles to process scientific data stored on central servers, Radioactive@Home turns volunteers' computers into real-time remote sensing nodes. Each participating computer continuously measures local gamma radiation and reports readings to the project server, where they are aggregated into an interactive map.

Methods

Why BOINC?

BOINC provides a robust, cross-platform, open-source framework for managing distributed task distribution, data upload, credit accounting, and client communication at scale. For Radioactive@Home, BOINC's scheduler handles the continuous process of collecting sensor readings from thousands of geographically dispersed hosts, authenticating them, and uploading the time-stamped data to the project database - tasks that would require enormous custom infrastructure to replicate independently. The BOINC credit system also gives participants an incentive and a record of their contributions.

Radioactive@Home is classified as a Non-CPU-Intensive (NCI) project. This means the BOINC application running on the volunteer's computer does not significantly burden the CPU; it simply reads data from the USB-attached sensor periodically and transmits it. As a result, it can run seamlessly alongside other CPU-intensive BOINC projects such as Einstein@Home or Rosetta@home without competition for processing resources.

The Sensor

Unlike almost every other BOINC project, Radioactive@Home requires dedicated external hardware to participate. Without the sensor, the application does nothing and no credits are granted. The sensor is a custom-built Geiger counter based on the Soviet-era SBM-20 (СБМ-20) Geiger–Müller tube, a robust and sensitive detector of hard beta and gamma radiation.

A Geiger-Müller tube of the type used in radiation detectors. The SBM-20 tube used by Radioactive@Home operates at approximately 400 V DC and is sensitive to gamma and hard beta radiation.

The SBM-20 tube operates at a working voltage of approximately 380–480 V DC. A high-voltage DC-DC converter on the sensor board generates this operating voltage from the USB 5 V supply. The resulting pulse output for each detected ionizing particle is counted by an onboard microcontroller, which communicates with the host computer over USB.

The original Radioactive@Home sensor was designed by project contributor "Szopler" and prototyped by Krzysztof Piszczek in 2011; early development progress was publicly documented on the project website beginning in May 2011. The firmware runs on a V-USB software USB stack, and the sensor board frequency was adjusted from 1 MHz to 12 MHz to be compatible with it.

Safety notice: The sensor board carries approximately 400 V DC on the right-hand side of the PCB. The project documentation includes an explicit warning that touching this section during operation can be hazardous. The device should be housed in a non-conductive enclosure, and kept away from children and pets.

A second-generation detector prototype by Ryszard Korczyk was announced in February 2012, improving on the design of the original. Sensors are periodically made available for order from the project team; as of 2025, the project administrator has expressed interest in commissioning a new professional batch of 100–150 detectors.

How Gamma Radiation is Measured

The SBM-20 Geiger–Müller tube detects ionizing radiation through the principle of gas ionization. The tube contains an inert gas at low pressure and a high-voltage electrode. When an ionizing particle (gamma ray or hard beta particle) enters the tube, it collides with gas molecules, ejecting electrons. The resulting free electrons are accelerated toward the central anode by the electric field, triggering a Townsend avalanche - a cascade of further ionizations that amplifies the initial event into a detectable electrical pulse.

The count rate from the GM tube is proportional to the ambient gamma dose rate. The BOINC application converts raw count data into standardised units, typically expressed in microsieverts per hour (μSv/h), and transmits geolocated readings to the project server. A continuous dose rate of 0.1 μSv/h corresponds roughly to an annual dose of approximately <math>0.1 \, \mu\text{Sv/h} \times 8760 \, \text{h/year} \approx 876 \, \mu\text{Sv/year} \approx 0.88 \, \text{mSv/year}</math>, which is well within the natural background range.

The Radiation Map

Sensor readings from all participating volunteers are aggregated on the project server and displayed on a public interactive radiation map at radioactiveathome.org/map/. Each data point on the map represents a real-time or recent reading from a volunteer's sensor, pinned to its reported location.

The map was historically built on the Google Maps API; however, following policy changes by Google, the project has announced a planned migration to OpenStreetMap (OSM).

OpenStreetMap, the open-source mapping platform to which Radioactive@Home's radiation map is migrating following changes to the Google Maps API.

The geographic distribution of sensors is necessarily uneven, reflecting the volunteer base, which is concentrated in Europe and particularly Poland. Nevertheless, the map represents one of the few freely accessible, community-sourced gamma radiation atlases in the world.

Platform Support

The Radioactive@Home BOINC application ("Radioactivity Monitor") supports a notably wide range of platforms for a BOINC project, including embedded and single-board computers. The application versions currently served by the project are:

Platform	Version	Notes
Microsoft Windows (x86)	1.78	Released 15 Apr 2014
Linux (x86, NCI)	1.78	Released 29 Jan 2015
Raspberry Pi - Debian Wheezy (armv6l)	1.78	Released 8 May 2014
Raspberry Pi - Raspbian (armv6l)	1.78	Released 8 May 2014
Linux on A20-OLinuXino	1.78	Released 24 Jan 2015
Linux on MIPS	1.77	Released 24 Jun 2013
armv5tel Linux 2.6	1.03	Released 26 Mar 2012

Support for single-board computers such as the Raspberry Pi makes the project especially well-suited for low-power, always-on monitoring, where a Pi continuously attached to a sensor can be left running without meaningful electricity cost.

The project does not use GPU acceleration, reflecting the nature of the task - data collection rather than intensive numerical computation.

Participating in the project is free of charge, though volunteers must purchase or build a compatible sensor. The project is entirely non-commercial.

Project team / Sponsors

Radioactive@Home was founded and is led by Krzysztof Piszczek, a Polish volunteer scientist and member of the BOINC@Poland distributed computing community. The project operates under the motto "Open Science for the future" - a philosophy of making scientific data freely available to all.

On 2 July 2012, a new legal entity, the BOINC Polska Foundation (Polish: Fundacja BOINC Polska), was established by members of the BOINC@Poland team to provide formal oversight of the project. The Foundation was created to improve the sensor ordering and delivery process, and to address the ongoing challenge of financing hardware procurement for the project.

The project is affiliated with and supported by the broader BOINC@Poland community - one of Poland's most active distributed computing groups - which contributes development expertise, community outreach, and logistical support for sensor distribution.

Scientific results

Radioactive@Home's primary scientific output is its live and historical radiation dataset. Because the sensors are fixed at volunteer locations and operate continuously, the project generates longitudinal environmental radiation time-series data that complements government monitoring networks by providing additional spatial resolution, particularly in areas between official monitoring stations.

The project's data is publicly accessible, consistent with its open science mandate. While the project has not yet produced peer-reviewed publications as of this writing, it contributes to the broader field of citizen science environmental monitoring - a domain that has grown significantly since the 2011 Fukushima disaster accelerated interest in distributed radiation sensing. Notable parallel citizen science initiatives include Safecast, a volunteer network that arose after Fukushima to produce open radiation data in Japan.

For BOINC project publications more broadly, see the BOINC publications list maintained by the University of California, Berkeley.

External links

• Radioactive@Home - Official BOINC project page
• Radioactive@Home - Live radiation sensor map
• Radioactive@Home - English project website
• Radioactive@Home - BOINCstats statistics
• BOINC project publications list - Berkeley
• BC-Team Wiki: Radioactive@Home (English)
• BOINC Wiki: Radioactive@Home