4 ms·

Things get contaminated by radioactive material, not by radiation exposure [0]. And of course obligatory xkcd [1]. [0] https://www.mirion.com/introduction-to-r

• Roboprog 10y ago
  So, your biggest problem in a reactor cooling pool is "lead poisoning", eh? :-) Anyway, worth pointing out that cosmic rays are little groups of neutrons (and adjoining protons). I don't know about the half life of the resulting products, though, or how often a heavy nucleus collides with another nucleus, vs simply bashing through electron bonds.