4 ms·
How are the byproducts a timebomb? Half-life is the exact opposite of a timebomb.
by TheHypnotist 7y ago
How are the byproducts a timebomb? Half-life is the exact opposite of a timebomb.
- coldtea 7y agoA timebomb as in "matter of time before the problem exploded" (they spill/poison waters/etc). The half-lives involved are so large compared to societal time they don't really matter (and doesn't really play into the metaphor). It's not like we just need to store them for 1-10 years and then we're OK. Plutonium has a HL of 20K years IIRC. Btw, conventional time-bombs also lose their potency over time (e.g. TNT breaks down in thousands of years). But the explosion can be programmed much earlier, and similarly, the byproducts can mess things up much earlier than their half lives.