3 ms·
> The shorter the half-life of an isotope is, the more radioactive and thus dangerous it is. > The longer the half-life of an isotope is, the less radioactive
by mehrdadn 8y ago
> The shorter the half-life of an isotope is, the more radioactive and thus dangerous it is.
> The longer the half-life of an isotope is, the less radioactive and thus dangerous it is.
> Fukushima happened in 2011, almost 8 years ago. Almost everything dangerous had since decayed.
Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,100 years and is pretty dangerous AFAIK [1]:
> Radioactive contaminants are dangerous for 10 to 20 times the length of their half-lives, meaning that dangerous plutonium released to the environment today will stick around for the next half a million years.
[1] https://www.livescience.com/33127-plutonium-more-dangerous-uranium.html https://www.livescience.com/33127-plutonium-more-dangerous-u...
- erobbins 8y agoYeah, even longer lived things that decay via alpha particles are dangerous when ingested... high energy atomic nuclei hitting DNA makes for bad juju.
- lstodd 8y agoFukushima wasn't a military breeder producing Pu-239. Its release was mostly I and Cs isotopes with half-lifes in days. And Cs-137 with 30-ish year half-life which we have to thank for this discussion.
- mehrdadn 8y agoI think you mistook the point of the response. I was responding to the points I quoted, i.e. regarding the lengths of half-lives involved and the associated dangers and decay rates. The fact that the link mentioned Fukushima when discussing these was a coincidence.