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Geiger Counter Vs Metal Detector


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3 hours ago, nugget hunter said:

any thoughts on the use of a geiger counter instead of a metal detector for prospecting ....U , TH , TE , IN , RB , RE , PT

WELL a Geiger counter as far as i understand it measures radiation levelsĀ  don't know how one of those would help with detection of gold or prospecting unless you are trying to detect gold in the areas they did nuclear testing and want to know if the levels are safe to enter

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Geiger counters are used to look for radioactive minerals, and more specifically for uranium prospecting. They have no real application outside of that. Any information about something like using a Geiger counter to look for silver would involve some rare situation where a radioactive mineral is being used as a tracer.

Anyway, not much use for gold but possibly of use for platinum group metals which may be associated with uranium in some cases.

https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/jres/64A/jresv64An1p107_A1b.pdf

http://www.minsocam.org/ammin/AM38/AM38_463.pdf

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thank u steve for your interest ..... right this minute am working on samples to be tested at a lab .... may be then i know what questions to ask ....so far i think if there is gold its very small same with the platinum .... my vision very bad and i dont have aĀ  microscope .....the reason i got interested about gieger counters was the worldsĀ  greatest find a few years back was in this area ....Palladium ,,,,,from 200 miles up was discovered in the sea to the north in 12000 feet of water .....if i remember right some platinum group metals are alloy together and i think one is radioactive if not 2 of them ....so u got tracers AS , bi , te , sb if i remember right for AU ... well maybe a gieger counter could help find , RE , PT , PD , IR , OS .....i dont care about U , and TH they are illegal here anyway and worthless to me ...once again thank u steve wish i was in may creek ....so look at 21th century prospecting from above i dont have the time right now

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A Geiger counter does nothing more more than indicate that ionizing radiation is present.Ā  The best it can discriminate is to differentiate the three common forms of natural terrestrial originated forms:Ā  alpha, beta, and gamma.Ā  But there are enough sources of these (although dominated by Uranium, Thorium, and Potassium) that just knowing you have an emitter doesn't tell you what you have.Ā  Further investigation/testing is required.Ā  Think of U & Th (and their daughters) as the iron and aluminum trash that annoys detectorists (particularly those using non-discriminating PI detectors), except its abundance ratio compared to other radioactive elements (desirable or otherwise) is many-fold worse.

IMO, finding precious metals with a metal detector is orders of magnitude more likely to be successful than the lucky off-chance that some valuable (precious metal) mineral associated with a radioactive mineral can be picked up with Geiger counter.Ā  And because of the secondary testing that would be required with a Geiger counter, MDing is less expensive in addition.

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On 1/14/2020 at 4:55 AM, jasper said:

What geiger counter can you suggest?

I used to sell Geiger counters years ago for around $900 similar to theseĀ but it appears there is nobody making a decent affordable prospecting unit these days. The ones beingĀ soldĀ are for personal radiation/bomb shelter type use and not really designed for prospecting. Walmart sells a modified bomb shelter type unit that looks ok but they clearly bill it as being sold for educational purposes only. I would of recommended a Geometrics model but they also have gotten out of the business. There just is no market anymore. We are pretty much past the days of the individual prospector out looking for uranium. That was more a 1950s thing.

Whiteā€™s Electronics Uranium Detectors

67B4E7DA-6998-4658-BF0F-6E77ED598C3F.jpeg

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Forget about Geiger counter its a waist of time for a seroius exploration project for all of the reasons stated above by the learned memers of this forum.

What you need is one of these:

https://www.thermofisher.com/order/catalog/product/XL3TGOLDDPLUS#/XL3TGOLDDPLUS

Get yourself a 'Niton, xl3 gold plus' every serious gold explorer needs one! An xrf will definitely help you find gold if you apply it right. If your smart about it, it'll pay for its self very quickly.

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