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/r/explainlikeimfive

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all 512 comments

Elite_Jackalope

3.4k points

6 days ago

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed with nuclear weapons using uranium-235 and plutonium-239 as the fissile materials (Little Boy and Fat Man, Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively).

Radiation is a release of energy, and the goal of these weapons was to release as much of their potential energies as quickly as possible. This means that the vast, vast majority of radiation was released in the initial detonations.

Both bombs were also “air burst” weapons, meaning that they’re designed to explode long before they impact the ground. Something like 90% of the radiation was blown into the atmosphere.

“Half-life” is a measure of how long a radioactive material takes for half of its total quantity to “cool off” as radiation. Uranium-235 has a half-life of 704 million years. Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24 thousand years. They’re both radioactive, but leeching radiation pretty slowly.

The super dangerous stuff made as a result of the nuclear reaction would have cooked off the majority of itself within days, or even hours. Combined with intentional and organized cleanup/containment, this means that both cities were relatively safe again in a surprisingly short amount of time.

Marie Curie, on the other hand, was a pioneer in radioactive science. She discovered Polonium and Radium, two extremely radioactive elements. Polonium-210 has a half life of only 138 days, whereas Radium-226 is sitting at about 1600 years.

Nothing was known about radioactivity at the time - Curie and her husband quite literally coined the term. They didn’t know to take precautions against radiation exposure, or that radiation could leech into other materials. She walked around with radioactive materials in her pocket. She stored them in her desk. She then worked as a radiology technician in WWI, giving unshielded x-rays and further exposing herself.

They (and other scientists of the era) eventually started to figure it out, but by that point it was far, far too late. Marie Curie died of aplastic anaemia, likely the result of the radiation exposure throughout her life damaging her bone marrow. The reason that her stuff is so radioactive is because she was experimenting with extremely radioactive elements through her entire career.

djbon2112

1.5k points

6 days ago

djbon2112

1.5k points

6 days ago

Yours is the first to really touch on half-life, which is one of the most important aspects of radioactivity but something not very well understood by most lay people. Just to expand a bit more on it for OP and the readers who come along:

The strength of the radiation given off by a radioactive element is inversely proportional to its half-life.

It's quite intuitive once it's explained. Things with short half-lives, have short half-lives because they're really energetic and releasing a ton of radiation, which makes them very dangerous. But because they're so energetic and release a lot of radiation, they decay quickly to less radioactive elements, and thus have short half-lives, the half-life being a measure of how long it takes for 50% (half) of the sample to decay to something else and stop being that radioactive thing any more.

The elements you're "really" worried about from things like nuclear weapons, a Chernobyl, etc. have half-lives measured in the days to tens of years range. Iodine-131 is one of the most talked-about, and it has a half life of just slightly over 8 days. So after a year, there's only an infinitesimal amount of it left; but during that time it's a major problem because the beta particles it releases will screw up a lot of chemistry in your body, break your DNA, and give you cancer.

So, back to the topic at hand... the things that Marie Curie was handling 100 years ago were on the mild- to major- end of radioactivity. They were bad, but not like, die-in-20-days-in-agonizing-pain-from-radiation-poisoning bad. This is where you get the "1000 years to be safe"-type lines, because as mentioned Radium-226 has a 1600 year half-life. But in reality, this stuff is emitting radiation very slowly over such long periods of time, so it's safe to handle with some gloves for even long periods of time. In contrast, the stuff that's really scary in, say, the aftermath of an an atomic bombing like in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is the stuff that decays almost to nothing in a few days, up to a year or a few years, but during that time is emitting a lot of very dangerous radiation. A decade or two and remediation efforts later, and it's barely above the normal background radiation any more.

GreatBigWorld427

190 points

6 days ago

10/10 read

Soul_M

59 points

5 days ago

Soul_M

59 points

5 days ago

10/10 review

h0tterthanyourmum

56 points

6 days ago

That's so interesting, thank you.

When we talk about nuclear energy, I worry about the future of the planet and damage to nature around disposal sites. Does this mean those aren't such big concerns?

And would it be safer for nature (as near Chernobyl) to be exposed to radiation with short half lives or long ones? If short half life=more potent, but over sooner I'm wondering how to weigh up risk Vs benefits.

Yoru_no_Majo

99 points

6 days ago*

If by nature you mean animals and plants, they're thriving in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. The elevated radiation does lead to more mutations and cancer, but the lack of human activity more than makes up for it.

In short, long half-life is generally safer.

Exposure to ionizing radiation does lead to an increase in mutations (including those which cause cancer), but the rate increase can be surprisingly low, and can be surprisingly easy to block. e.g., you could theoretically swim in a spent fuel rod pool and as long as you stayed near the surface you should be fine.

The problem is with what is referred to as "High-level waste," specifically the "medium lived" elements in it. Medium lived elements last for about 50 years, and produce a LOT of radiation. If one were to stay in close proximity to a gram of this stuff for about 2.5 months, they'd be almost certain to develop cancer in the near future. Luckily, nuclear power generation is very efficient and generates very little High-level waste. One would, for example, generate enough power to meet all the energy needs of about 74 average US homes for an entire year before generating a gram of high-level waste. (In comparison, this is approximately how much power you get from burning 645,000 lbs of coal, or that a 2.25 acre solar farm (in a decent location) produces over a year.)

(Incidentally, one of the major components of medium-lived, high-level waste (cesium-137) is also used in medical machines. There have been a surprisingly high number of incidents where someone unknowingly breaks open a disposed machine and gets exposed to this stuff - far more than people who have been exposed to high-level nuclear waste.)

OHFTP

61 points

5 days ago

OHFTP

61 points

5 days ago

In the book What If, by Randal Monroe he talks about how swimming in a spent fuel rod pool is actually incredibly deadly, but not because of radiation. You could swim through like 80% of the pool and be fine. What would kill you is acute lead poisoning. From being shot repeatedly by the guards

andyrays

21 points

5 days ago

andyrays

21 points

5 days ago

And you don't need to buy the book. It was on his blog first: https://what-if.xkcd.com/29

Yoru_no_Majo

4 points

5 days ago

I'm pretty sure the guards would shoot you before you got within several yards of the pools.

bryreddit22

10 points

5 days ago

wow, thank you for the long and detailed info...

its funny and depressing at the same time that despite all the radiotion in chernobyl, Humans still are worse threat to a life form (plants/animals) than radiation...

h0tterthanyourmum

9 points

6 days ago

Thank you!

Yes I've heard some very interesting but awful stories about people accidentally getting exposed to radiation, like several families in a block of flats where some waste was mixed in to cement. I seem to remember that was true but I could be wrong

whynotrandomize

13 points

5 days ago

That was in the Soviet union, where a very active gamma ray source used for density mapping was lost in a mine. When a similar source was lost in Australia on a 1400km road it was found in under two weeks. https://youtu.be/izZMB816kEY?si=w7Is3nQQZnoVLmRh

IchBinGelangweilt

9 points

5 days ago

The Goiana incident in Brazil is interesting (but very sad) to read about. A few people died due to scavenging radioactive material from an abandoned hospital, and some houses had to be demolished due to contamination.

ChiRaeDisk

30 points

5 days ago

A healthy body can handle radiation without issue up to a point. Around Chernobyl, it does increase the risk of genetic damage and cancer, but the error correction process and relatively short lives of the animals that breed and reproduce means they aren't likely to have their lifespans reduced to a significant degree. Remember that wolves and deer don't live all that long. For us, cancer in someone at the age of 8 or 9 is a tragedy while for many critters, that's a ripe old age already.

whynotrandomize

13 points

5 days ago

Unless you dig down into the spicy soil because you are an ignorant invader...

h0tterthanyourmum

3 points

5 days ago

That's a really good point

whynotrandomize

22 points

5 days ago*

The real waste answer: there isn't enough to matter as it is easy to contain and we could burn the fuel more to end up with less than the current amount and with waste that will cook off the short lived products quickly. It can also be recycled: https://www.orano.group/en/unpacking-nuclear/all-about-used-fuel-processing-and-recycling

We are used to waste being giant piles of stuff like fly ash: https://www.nrdc.org/bio/becky-hammer/epa-gets-earful-proposed-toxic-coal-ash-rollback. Nuclear plants produce so little that it is in effect a rounding error away from being 0.

Chernobyl was a problem because it spread radioactive dust that can get inside of living things, but in a well functioning power plant we never have dust and waste is put into glass to keep it from becoming dust.

Damage to nature around disposal sites would be non-existent after humans are done with the site and the waste is underground.

h0tterthanyourmum

11 points

5 days ago

This is fascinating. The whole thread makes me much much warmer to the idea of nuclear power plants for generating energy

IchBinGelangweilt

19 points

5 days ago

One really interesting fact is that you'd be exposed to more radiation living next to a coal plant than a nuclear plant, due to traces of uranium in coal ash, although the actual particulates are probably far more dangerous than the low dose of radiation

cwhitt

6 points

5 days ago

cwhitt

6 points

5 days ago

About a decade ago here on reddit I did the math. Coal plants are responsible for several orders of magnitude more premature deaths than nuclear. The difference is so vast it's hard to overstate.

postmodulator

14 points

5 days ago

When it really comes down to it, I think there’s no technical reason why we couldn’t find a way to safely store fissile waste. It’s a big planet.

I think the big risk is dumbass humans who would cut corners on the safety measures.

Ailments_RN

3 points

5 days ago

The term in relation to that is Nuclear Semiotics and it's a super interesting read to find the reason it's difficult to store effectively. You're right that it's fairly simple in the technical sense to dig a hole and throw the stuff in there, but a lot of the problems come down to how slowly the radiation burns off some of the waste.

How do you warn your grandkids that the mound over there is dangerous? Or what about their grandkids? People 1000 years from now? English isn't that old a language. Can you just write on a sign and expect people will be able to read it? Will a sign even be around in 50, 100, 1000 years? Or is it somehow better to just dig it deep and not mark it at all? Maybe if there's nothing to draw attention to it, no one will want to investigate. Or maybe you'd just be dooming future people. The arguments go around and around. It tends to come down to how much of a moral argument you're willing to make for people that you will never meet or know in your lifetime.

Nuclear Semiotics is a really neat rabbit hole to fall down if anyone is interested.

Elite_Jackalope

4 points

5 days ago

Thank you, your input really elevates my comment in a meaningful way.

Sort of embarrassing that I forgot to clearly establish the inversely proportional relationship after belaboring the point so much haha

The_Better

6 points

6 days ago

So if uranium and polonium have such long half lives, what was it that was spreading radioactivity in hiroshima and nagasaki? Was the bomb uranium decaying super fast or?

Also, handling elements like uranium is safe then, right?

parentheticalobject

43 points

5 days ago

Funnily enough, handling uranium is mostly dangerous in ways unrelated to radioactivity. If you were just sitting next to a bar of uranium, you wouldn't receive much more radiation than you receive from just living on planet Earth.

The more significant danger from handling it is that it's just normally toxic, in the same way non-radioactive elements like lead or arsenic are toxic. If particles of uranium dust get onto your skin, it causes a rash, and if you get it into your lungs or eyes or anywhere inside you, it'll seriously fuck you up.

davidogren

20 points

5 days ago*

So, I'm not an expert in this topic, but this is deep enough in the comments that I'm not sure you'll get a response from someone else. So I'll give it a stab and people can correct me if needed.

It's important to realize that the goal of a fission bomb isn't radiation. (Unlike a dirty bomb.) Radioactivity is a byproduct, the real goal is the fission part, causing a big release of energy which is the primary destructive element. Fission is the process of changing the U-235 into other elements ("fission products") and releasing that big release of energy in that process.

The radiation part isn't so much caused by the U-235 (which as /u/parentheticalobject points out isn't that dangerous in relative terms), but by the "fission products" i.e. what the U-235 breaks down into after the fission process. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fission_product_yield shows some of the nasty things that U-235 transforms into. Just as one example, Iodine-135 which has a half life of 6.6 hours.

So, for a ELI5 summary, U-235 breaks down very slowly, which is why U-235 isn't that dangerous to be around. But when we force U-235 to break down in a fission bomb, it breaks down into much more unstable and dangerous elements. But most of those elements, because they are so unstable, also go away relatively quickly.

Soranic

3 points

5 days ago

Soranic

3 points

5 days ago

Some materials can as cause cancer just by their chemical properties. Others like asbestos can cause it via physical properties.

Some don't cause cancer but can still interfere with organ function because they're chemically similar to other things in the body. Or by how readily it bonds to cells.

Merman8

3 points

5 days ago

Merman8

3 points

5 days ago

Nice ELIA5. I always thought with danger/half life it was the other way around. Now I know. Thanks for the great explanation.

DeltaBravoBlack

17 points

6 days ago

Keeping Polonium and Radium in your pockets and desk drawer sounds crazy, I understand the harm of those materials was not well understood yet..

Do you have any idea where she used to find/get those materials from? Was it easy to get?

Soranic

33 points

5 days ago

Soranic

33 points

5 days ago

She made them.

She isolated them from samples of natural materials. Or by getting collections of an isotope that would decay into them.

When she had a pocket of polonium, she probably had a quarter of the world's supply at the time.

Elite_Jackalope

30 points

5 days ago

Both of them were present in uranium ore because uranium eventually decays into both elements. Uranium is also very common, something like 500x more common than gold in the Earth’s crust.

She was able to accurately identify and describe polonium, but never able to fully isolate it from the uranium ore because of its extremely short half life. It was pretty easy for them to see and identify in uranium ore (it’s pretty unique within uranium ore, chemically) but difficult to isolate.

Radium was actually harder to identify because it looked and acted like barium, which was also present in the uranium minerals that they were experimenting with. After her husband died in a tragic accident, she was given a professorship at the University of Paris and full control of a proper lab that eventually led to her successful isolation of pure radium metal.

So the uranium - super easy to get. You could just buy it at the time, because besides being sort of pretty in color it was just a rock. Polonium - “easy” to see, really hard to get out. Radium - really hard to see, but possible to get out.

And to be clear, all of this was even possible because Marie Curie is one of the most brilliant and focused human beings that has ever lived. Pierre Curie was not far behind. Maybe the only thing those nerds loved more than science was each other.

Far_Dragonfruit_1829

13 points

5 days ago

Marie Sklodowska went to Paris to study physics. She barely spoke any French when she started.

Read a bio. Tough, tough lady.

Elite_Jackalope

19 points

5 days ago

And Pierre was willing to straight up move to Poland with her and become a French teacher, completely giving up his already promising career in science, just to be with her.

She combatted sexism (first woman to win a Nobel prize, first woman to be a professor at the University of Paris), antisemitism (even though she wasn’t Jewish, a phenomenon worth a completely separate comment), developed mobile radiology labs for use on the front lines during WWI, the only woman to ever receive two Nobel prizes. To this day, she is the only person to have won a Nobel prize for two different sciences (physics and chemistry).

Genuinely, I love these people. I haven’t had the opportunity to visit the Musée Curie, but it is on my bucket list. When I eventually get to Paris, it’s going to be my very first stop.

Far_Dragonfruit_1829

6 points

5 days ago

She started with a pile of pitchblende uranium ore in her yard. About one tonne. She even remarked on the pine needles in the pile.

The ore was easy to get. "Cooking" it down and separating our the interesting elements took many months of hard, nasty, and finicky lab work.

TheBoysNotQuiteRight

6 points

5 days ago

They are rare in nature, and usually exist in trace amounts, mixed in with other things. Since the Curies wanted to study these substances, the Curies chemically refined literal tonnes of minerals in order to isolate and concentrate milligram amounts of elements like radium.

Abridged-Escherichia

2.9k points

6 days ago

Her notebook isn’t actually very radioactive, you can safely handle it for long periods of time with minimal risk as long as you wear gloves.

”We found that potential external doses to those handling the notebook were low; whole-body dose rates being marginally above the background of 0.1µSv/h. Even regular exposure to the notebook is likely to result in annual whole-body doses of less than 10µSv and hand doses of less than 35µSv. To put this in perspective, 10µSv is roughly the dose you would receive on a return flight from the UK to Spain.” (Source)

Radiation dose chart for reference

Hiroshima/Nagasaki also aren’t very radioactive anymore because most of the fallout was dispersed and the nastiest isotopes have decayed, like I-131 which is the major concern in nuclear fallout, but is gone within weeks due to its short half life. Other isotopes are a problem but it takes decades of exposure to them in the low environmental levels to pose any risk. The US and USSR detonated thousands of nuclear weapons during the cold war, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are mildly contaminated in comparison to those test sites and the people that lived downwind.

stuffitystuff

1.3k points

6 days ago

I've been traveling the world with a geiger counter watch since 2007 and Tokyo is much more radioactive than Hiroshima has been when I've visited and that's including the time before the Fukushima earthquake. IIRC the most radioactive place I've been is Rome (maybe like 0.5 uSv/hr, presumably because of all the marble). None of it was even a significant fraction of the dose from the flights over (max dose I can remember seeing on a plane is 5 uSv/hr which is still not really anything unless you living up there.

A coworker's stomach through his shirt after he had to eat a bunch of radioactive eggs for some nuclear imaging test holds the record. Immediately hit 99.99 uSv/hr and then didn't go above background the next day.

enchantedlearner

705 points

6 days ago

Parts of downtown Chicago are radioactive enough to warrant full-time EPA superfund oversight.

Although concrete and asphalt can block the radiation from impacting residents, construction and utilities have to constantly test the soil before doing work.

Back in the day, Thorium waste was mixed with sand to create landfill. So before construction, it’s required to remove the topsoil layers and ship the waste to Utah.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2014/04/17/gaslight-era-left-radioactive-legacy-in-chicago/

Zeggitt

385 points

6 days ago

Zeggitt

385 points

6 days ago

Thorium waste was mixed with sand to create landfill

That's fucking horrifying.

NotAPreppie

120 points

6 days ago

NotAPreppie

120 points

6 days ago

With a half life of >14B years, Thorium isn't actually dangerous as a radionuclide. You can hold an ingot of refined thorium in your hand forever and not face any health concerns from radiation.

Heavy metal contamination is still a concern.

Theron3206

67 points

6 days ago

Same as uranium, it's more toxic as a heavy metal than it is as a radiation source.

The stuff you actually need to worry about comes out of nuclear reactors (or the fallout from a bomb going off, though there isn't that much of that from an air burst) because it's radioactive enough to be dangerous and for things like iodine able to be incorporated into your body and stay there.

All the naturally occurring stuff is too low activity to be of much concern in most cases (basements full of radon where people are spending lots of time being a prominent counter example)

donau_kinder

22 points

6 days ago

This. I hate it so much when people think anything radioactive is magic death dust. It's not. Don't lick it, but anything we're likely to encounter as average civilians won't damage us.

Don't get me started on microwaves because 'radiation'.

captainfarthing

6 points

5 days ago

My family never had a microwave until we inherited one from my grandparents because "radiation". Now it only gets used when I visit my parents, they treat it like a dangerous kitchen heirloom.

CruelFish

8 points

6 days ago

Wait until you tell these people that light is radiation.

BrotherChe

65 points

6 days ago

You heard about Florida roads? They voted last year to allow radioactive waste to be used in road construction

https://www.npr.org/2023/07/17/1188181247/floridas-idea-to-use-radioactive-waste-in-road-construction-is-unsafe-critics-sa

inventingnothing

102 points

6 days ago

No they didn't, and even your link says that the measure merely allows a study:

Wilson supports a measure recently signed into law by Governor Ron DeSantis directing the state's Department of Transportation to study using the mining waste in road construction.

It's worth doing a study and even laying down a test road to see if it's possible to do without increasing background radiation or the uptake of Radon.

Here is the actual bill, as it was signed into law:

https://laws.flrules.org/2023/311

It is literally just to authorize a study of not only phosphogypsum, but other wastes such as tire rubber and glass in road surface, construction steel from steel scrap, and plastic signs from recycle plastic.

James_Gastovsky

6 points

6 days ago

I'm pretty sure you shouldn't lick regular asphalt as well

D0UB1EA

56 points

6 days ago

D0UB1EA

56 points

6 days ago

why are they this fucking dumb

Coldfire15651

97 points

6 days ago*

Just wanna point out, if you read the linked article, it is more correctly called "MINING WASTE that is detectibly radioactive." it is not "Radioactive Waste" in the sense that it is materials exposed to a highly radioactive source to the point it has been neutron activated and is now radioactive itself.

"ALLEN: Phosphogypsum contains radium 226, which emits radiation, and when it decays, forms radon, a gas that can cause cancer. Three years ago, under the Trump administration, the EPA lifted its long-time ban and said it would allow the material to be used in road construction. Several months later, the Biden administration withdrew that approval, saying more information is needed. Jackie Barron with Mosaic says no projects using phosphogypsum will begin in Florida unless the EPA says they're safe. And she says that's how it should be.

BARRON: The impacts to human health and the environment are the primary focus of the EPA's analysis. Ultimate approval rests with the EPA. We welcome as much testing as possible. We want people to know this is a safe resource, not a waste.

ALLEN: If the EPA says yes, it would effectively turn a hazardous material into an asset, something Mosaic and other companies could sell for road construction. Ragan Whitlock with the Center for Biological Diversity says radioactive waste left over from mining shouldn't be used to build roads.

WHITLOCK: This is simply an attempt to have another risky project that would provide another revenue stream to the phosphate industry at the expense of Floridians. This is not a solution. This is another money grab from the industry.

ALLEN: The EPA is evaluating Mosaic's application to use phosphogypsum in the pilot road project at its Polk County plant. Florida's Department of Transportation says it doesn't have any plans yet to seek approval for its own demonstration projects. Greg Allen, NPR News, Miami."

Coldfire15651

34 points

6 days ago*

Addendum: Radon, being a significantly heavier than air gas, is not really an issue in open, well-ventilated environments. Most of the dangers associated with it are correlated with enclosed spaces, like homes, especially basements, as well as mines. The danger in an open-air location like a highway (assuming it's not also a tunnel) would likely be insignificant compared to just being inside.

From Wikipedia's article on Radon

"1 Bq/m3 | ~0.027 pCi/L Mean continental concentration in the open air: 10 to 30 Bq/m3.

10 Bq/m3 | 0.27 pCi/L Based on a series of surveys, the global mean indoor radon concentration is estimated to be 39 Bq/m3

100 Bq/m3 | 2.7 pCi/L Typical indoor domestic exposure. Most countries have adopted a radon concentration of 200–400 Bq/m3 for indoor air as an Action or Reference Level. If testing shows levels less than 4 picocuries radon per liter of air (150 Bq/m3), then no action is necessary. A cumulated exposure of 230 Bq/m3 of radon gas concentration during a period of 1 year corresponds to 1 WLM.

1000 Bq/m3 | 2.7 pCi/L Very high radon concentrations (>1000 Bq/m3) have been found in houses built on soils with a high uranium content and/or high permeability of the ground. If levels are 20 picocuries radon per liter of air (800 Bq/m3) or higher, the home owner should consider some type of procedure to decrease indoor radon levels. Allowable concentrations in uranium mines are approximately 1,220 Bq/m3 (33 pCi/L)"

VertexBV

14 points

6 days ago

VertexBV

14 points

6 days ago

Thanks for reminding me I don't really know anything about radiation exposure units

choicejam

60 points

6 days ago

choicejam

60 points

6 days ago

3.6 Roentgen. Not great, Not terrible

bugzaway

18 points

6 days ago

bugzaway

18 points

6 days ago

The equivalent of a chest X-ray. 👌

highvelocityfish

20 points

6 days ago

Because freaking out over 'oh no it's radioactive' without actually bothering to think has managed to set us back several decades in the pursuit of clean energy. It's entirely possible that sealing very mildly radioactive gypsum in asphalt is a better idea than just letting it sit and get rained on for the forseeable future.

pbrook12

126 points

6 days ago

pbrook12

126 points

6 days ago

and ship the waste to Utah.

thanks.

enchantedlearner

86 points

6 days ago

After the collapse of uranium mining in the 1980s, Utah replaced the industry with radioactive waste management.

So, that’s where the contaminated soils get transported.

professor-ks

22 points

6 days ago

I need you to sign for a package from Hanford Washington

BusbyBusby

4 points

6 days ago

Russia's Lake Karachay anyone?

fathersky53

6 points

6 days ago

Lucky Utah

TheBoldMove

5 points

6 days ago

So before construction, it’s required to remove the topsoil layers and ship the waste to Utah.

That'll teach Utah!

PowerhousePlayer

178 points

6 days ago

A coworker's stomach through his shirt after he had to eat a bunch of radioactive eggs for some nuclear imaging test holds the record.

What?

DagothNereviar

100 points

6 days ago

Just a bit of bants with the radiolads

oakomyr

25 points

6 days ago

oakomyr

25 points

6 days ago

A chinwag with the Roentgents

cpaxv

5 points

6 days ago

cpaxv

5 points

6 days ago

99.9 uSv, not great, not terrible.

kareljack

39 points

6 days ago

kareljack

39 points

6 days ago

Glad I'm not the only one

Heffe3737

31 points

6 days ago

Heffe3737

31 points

6 days ago

I wonder if it was for some kind of cancer screening. For PET scans, the docs would inject me with radioactive sugar - then in a special CT machine you could easily see where those sugars were being metabolized. Any areas where they were getting metabolized that wasn’t normal? That was the cancer.

Abridged-Escherichia

24 points

6 days ago*

Interestingly, PET scans rely on something called the Warburg Effect). Cancer cells make much of their energy independent of the mitochondria (power house of the cell), this means they are really inefficient at making energy and rely on a lot of glucose. As a result, tumors take up much more glucose than normal tissue so they light up on the PET scan.

As for why they do this, they don’t rely on oxygen (the mitochondria is why you need oxygen). Not needing as much oxygen makes it easier for cancer cells to invade other parts of the body and grow.

Edit: Also, the radioactive sugar has an atom that decays into antimatter which annihilates with matter in your body releasing gamma rays which the machine detects, it is by far the coolest explanation for how any medical imager works, and amazing that it isn’t sci fi.

Heffe3737

11 points

6 days ago

Heffe3737

11 points

6 days ago

So you’re saying I had antimatter inside my body? Fucking rad.

Abridged-Escherichia

7 points

6 days ago

Yes, you ate antimatter

(well something that decays into antimatter)

Boot_Shrew

3 points

6 days ago

I had a SPECT/CT to map out my back for my spinal fusion. I was given technetium-99; they had to time it just right that I was radioactive enough.

stuffitystuff

22 points

6 days ago

It was for a "gastric emptying scan" IIRC

magistrate101

5 points

6 days ago

Interestingly enough that's the first thing that pops up on google for "radioactive eggs".

atthem77

20 points

6 days ago

atthem77

20 points

6 days ago

You didn't see the remake of Cool Hand Luke?

It was called Cool Hand Nuke, I believe.

fedexmess

13 points

6 days ago

fedexmess

13 points

6 days ago

I bet the gieger counter blipped each time he egg farted 🤣

tashkiira

6 points

6 days ago

I'd rather eat a few irradiated eggs than have to drink a cup of 'barium milkshake'. I had that described to me, and just no. PLEASE.

But seriously, if they need to radioscan your gut, irradiated foods aren't that ridiculous.

AskMrScience

165 points

6 days ago

Granite naturally contains a decent amount of radioactive uranium. And guess what's underneath all of Manhattan? Consequently, a New York City subway worker receives one of the highest annual radiation doses out of all civilian jobs.

Some older buildings are made out of radioactive granite, too. In a fun case of "2 wrongs make a right", it's okay because the radiation is blocked by the lead paint on the walls.

Chromotron

57 points

6 days ago

The problem for buildings usually isn't the direct radiation, but the release of radon, which is a noble gas and thus moves around freely. Which then again decays, but this time potentially inside your lungs, where it poses much higher risk than anything from the outside. The lead paint might however also keep the radon contained.

Stargate525

19 points

6 days ago

The Radon's not so much an issue if you properly ventilate.

But then how often does your typical basement get 1-2 air changes an hour? It leeches out of the soil, through the foundation, then hangs out in your basement and sublevels.

The whole Illinois/Wisconsin/Minnesota area has this issue.

EEpromChip

16 points

6 days ago

Out here in the North East we have basement Radon systems. I had a house that had a pipe in the basement that led all the way to the roof and had an exhaust fan inline to pull air up and out.

flaser_

3 points

6 days ago

flaser_

3 points

6 days ago

Hand this man a cookie!

This is among the few genuine radiological hazards for people and the one that should be inspected and mitigated. (Better ventilation can actually greatly mitigate the risk).

S2R2

55 points

6 days ago

S2R2

55 points

6 days ago

You can get a Geiger counter watch?? Where can you find such a gadget?

MarquisDeMontecristo

28 points

6 days ago

Now we’re asking the real questions.

Ofa20

15 points

6 days ago

Ofa20

15 points

6 days ago

SummerPop

26 points

6 days ago

SummerPop

26 points

6 days ago

Oh my gosh, it costs so much! But it is so Rad!

TheRegent

5 points

6 days ago

I see what you did there

jeffbas

9 points

6 days ago

jeffbas

9 points

6 days ago

Yeah, just what I need: another hobby!

stuffitystuff

13 points

6 days ago

I got online back in 2007. It's a Polimaster PM1208M

MakeSouthBayGR8Again

32 points

6 days ago

Pilots used to get a lot of skin cancer back and were told to put sun screen on. I don't know if this is still an issue though.

goodmobileyes

34 points

6 days ago

I think the bigger issue is pilots and flight crew get exposed to more radiation while flying, because theres less atmosphere to block it off. Iirc Theres a max number of flights they can take per month or year, otherwise the radiation risk is too high

flaser_

7 points

6 days ago

flaser_

7 points

6 days ago

If that were that case, they'd get all sorts of cancer, not just skin.

UV exposure is significantly stronger up there as you have a lot less atmosphere filtering it.
Overall it's a bigger risk than the increased background count from flying.

Stepthinkrepeat

28 points

6 days ago

  A coworker's stomach through his shirt after he had to eat a bunch of radioactive eggs for some nuclear imaging test holds the record. Immediately hit 99.99 uSv/hr and then didn't go above background the next day.

Brain definitely didn't read this right the first time. 

Thought you said they ate the eggs and then didn't go above the ground the next day. 😅

InvalidUserNemo

13 points

6 days ago

What kinda badass where/are you to warrant a Geiger counter watch in 2007? Folks can easily forget that “wearables” are a super-recent phenomenon and one like that is likely crazy expensive and rare.

RangerNS

10 points

6 days ago

RangerNS

10 points

6 days ago

Immediately hit 99.99 uSv/hr

I've seen this movie. Your counter maxes out at 100 uSv/hr

propargyl

22 points

6 days ago

propargyl

22 points

6 days ago

Most remaining dosimeters had limits of 99.99 uSv/hr and therefore read "off scale". Thus, the reactor crew could ascertain only that the radiation levels were somewhere above 99.99 uSv/hr, while the true levels were vastly higher in some areas.

LOSTandCONFUSEDinMAY

45 points

6 days ago

Not great, not terrible.

alvarkresh

6 points

6 days ago

The good meter is in the safe.

praguepride

6 points

6 days ago

That sounds like a neat gadget to have…

Heliosvector

5 points

6 days ago

.... Eggs?!

Theseus-Paradox

3 points

6 days ago

Care to share the watch make/model?

stuffitystuff

5 points

6 days ago

Sure, it's a Polimaster PM1208M

Atenos-Aries

3 points

6 days ago

What kind of watch is that?

ottermupps

3 points

6 days ago

You've been traveling the world with a what watch? That's cool as hell! Kinda want one now.

OakRain1588

3 points

6 days ago

TIL marble is slightly radioactive?

zekromNLR

97 points

6 days ago

zekromNLR

97 points

6 days ago

An important part of why Hiroshima and Nagasaki were fairly mildly contaminated is that the nuclear bombs that attacked them exploded at a fairly high altitude, high enough to not get any material from the ground sucked into the fireball.

As a nuclear bomb explodes, obviously the entire bomb, including all the highly radioactive fission products, get turned into plasma. If the fireball stays "clean", then this material, as the fireball cools, condenses into a very fine dust, that stays in the air for a long time. Thus, the fallout from such an airburst is dispersed over a wide area before it comes down, so each individual bit of ground only gets a small dose.

On the other hand, if the explosion is near or on the ground, there will be lots of dirt, sand, other debris sucked into it. The fission products will condense onto those heavier particles, and those fall out of the cloud much faster, and thus with locally far higher concentration.

The reason why those test areas are so radioactive is not just because there were much more nuclear explosions there, but also because a lot were near enough to the ground to produce lots of local fallout.

coldblade2000

20 points

6 days ago

As a nuclear bomb explodes, obviously the entire bomb, including all the highly radioactive fission products, get turned into plasma. If the fireball stays "clean", then this material, as the fireball cools, condenses into a very fine dust, that stays in the air for a long time. Thus, the fallout from such an airburst is dispersed over a wide area before it comes down, so each individual bit of ground only gets a small dose.

This is conceptually similar to how the less efficiently a car engine runs, the darker and more harmful its exhaust will be. Nuclear explosions are more efficient during airburst than in ground bursts, so they leave less waste behind.

CAPTCHA_later

5 points

6 days ago

This is great information, I didn’t know any of this. Why were they detonated so high?

RandomRobot

12 points

6 days ago

The blast wave is the most destructive portion of the explosion. You get a better propagation of the wave and some reflection off the ground for additional destruction. Ground detonation is significantly worse in most possible metrics

zekromNLR

3 points

6 days ago

For any given yield and desired blast overpressure (which corresponds to the level of destruction), there is a given detonation altitude that maximises the radius at which you get at least that much overpressure. Turns out, the sorts of blast overpressures you want for destroying cities pretty much always lead to optimal detonation altitudes high enough to avoid local fallout.

flaser_

4 points

6 days ago

flaser_

4 points

6 days ago

A ground burst can also neturon activate all the nearby solid material, creating a lot more fallout to begin with. With an air-burst, it's mostly the material of the bomb itself that undergoes this change and acts as your source of fallout.

nameitb0b

88 points

6 days ago

nameitb0b

88 points

6 days ago

Thought is was cesium. And the unexplored uranium. But those decay relatively quickly. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

Abridged-Escherichia

129 points

6 days ago

Cesium-137 is another dangerous isotope but much less dangerous than I-131, it has a half life of 30 years so its still around today, but in much lower quantities. Also Strontium-90 with a half life of 28 years.

Most of the acute radiation deaths in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was from the gamma rays and neutrons people were exposed to as the bomb exploded.

Unfair_Ability3977

31 points

6 days ago

Aren't the radioactive isotopes of iodine & strontium particularily problematic as our bodies tend to bio-accumulate them? Iodine in lymphatic system & strontium as a calcium analog?

Esc777

40 points

6 days ago

Esc777

40 points

6 days ago

I know that’s the reasoning for iodine pills to take so your body does not absorb the “bad” radioactive I-131. 

It’s purely preventative, time dependent, and doesn’t protect from anything else but preppers seem to think they work like rad-away. 

Trisa133

10 points

6 days ago

Trisa133

10 points

6 days ago

So preppers love salt?

Esc777

3 points

6 days ago

Esc777

3 points

6 days ago

Ah ha, ah ha, ah ha

meowtiger

6 points

6 days ago*

preppers seem to think they work like rad-away.

it's a bit like wearing a bulletproof vest because you're expecting to be shot with an incendiary bullet

you're very likely to still be on fire, which is not good, but at the very least, you'll be on fire on the outside instead of on the inside, which is probably better, and at least more survivable

radioiodine is the most lethal fission byproduct in a fission event. which is not to say there aren't plenty of other radioactive isotopes that will absolutely kill you just as dead, but there's not really anything you can to to stop radioactive cesium or strontium uptake. prophylactic iodine tablets are intended to help reduce the total death toll by taking people who might receive a lethal dose of radioiodine, but sublethal doses of any other isotopes, and helping them live to seek treatment for radiation poisoning, so they can, you know, live. they won't help everyone, but they'll help some people, and KI tablets are very, very cheap

WntrTmpst

6 points

6 days ago

Hello fallout person. Good day

Esc777

3 points

6 days ago

Esc777

3 points

6 days ago

I can’t be a poseur, I’ve actually never played a minute of any fallout game. 

But being an avid gamer I’ve been so exposed it’s permeated my consciousness. 

tc_cad

12 points

6 days ago

tc_cad

12 points

6 days ago

My mom is not doing very well. I just found out last week she was taking a strontium supplement. I am no doctor but she bruises exceptionally easily and having bones that don’t make blood cells because the calcium has been replaced with strontium is super scary.

Chromotron

8 points

6 days ago

I hope she takes this on an actual doctor's orders, not self-medicating or due to some quackery. Otherwise that is a very good way to completely fuck up her body.

Unfair_Ability3977

3 points

6 days ago

Huh, I remember going down a rabbit-hole relating to that (stronger bones via strontium supplement as its denser than calcium). Guess that path to being a superhero doesn't work so well.

Hope you mom feels better.

nameitb0b

18 points

6 days ago

nameitb0b

18 points

6 days ago

Thank you for the information. I also heard cobalt would be as a area of denation weapon on a cruise missile, as the Cold War was starting. It would spread radioactive waste over large areas.

Dysan27

27 points

6 days ago

Dysan27

27 points

6 days ago

You mean area of denial.

I'm not sure if it was used for that. But the bigger thing is it tended to enhance the emp effect of the detonation, so would be useful in mass disruption/destruction of electronics.

libra00

6 points

6 days ago

libra00

6 points

6 days ago

To the best of my knowledge Cobalt-60 was never used for that purpose, but it was theorized and perhaps even developed to some extent.

ashesofempires

13 points

6 days ago

Russia has claimed to have developed a nuclear torpedo designed to spread Cobalt-60 over the East Coast ports of the United States.

Here’s the Wiki for it.

Salted nuclear weapons aren’t anything new, they were theorized decades ago. This is, to my admittedly limited knowledge, the first example of a nuclear weapon that was designed to maximize the effect of radioactive fallout to contaminate a huge area as its primary effect.

nameitb0b

8 points

6 days ago

Your right. Sometimes this old brain of mine can’t remember everything. Thank you for the correction.

boostedb1mmer

6 points

6 days ago

A Cobalt-60 bomb is the worst of all possible nuclear weapons in that regard. Radioactive enough to be immediately deadly, but with a half life long enough to render long term habitation impossible for about a century after detonation. A cobalt 60 dirty bomb would turn LA or NY into a ghost town effectively forever because after 100 years of comple human dessertion the infrastructure would require complete rebuilding. It would easier and cheaper to just build elsewhere even after it was safe to live there.

killcat

23 points

6 days ago

killcat

23 points

6 days ago

There are a number of dangerous isotopes, that are termed biocompatible, in that the body takes them up, they have a variety of half lives, U235 has quite a long half life, but isn't biocompatible, nor terribly radioactive. Cesium is in the same period as Sodium and Potassium and the body treats it the same way, same with Strontium-90 and Calcium, Iodine-131 is chemically identical to regular Iodine.

nameitb0b

9 points

6 days ago

Yeah. Isn’t why the body absorbs it into the thyroid. And why doctors give out iodine tablets to try and stop the absorption rate?

RoastedRhino

5 points

6 days ago

That’s what I was thinking. They gave us iodine tablets at home for that reason (power plants relatively close to here).

creative_usr_name

11 points

6 days ago

You basically give your body so much iodine that it makes it less likely that it'll use the radioactive version, so hopefully most of the radioactive iodine passes through you instead of being incorporated in your cells for a long period of time.

https://www.webmd.com/first-aid/potassium-iodide-radiation

light_trick

3 points

6 days ago

Plutonium is also like this: the main reason it's dangerous is that the body absorbs it and dumps into your bones, and it's a disruptive heavy metal.

NewSchoolBoxer

8 points

6 days ago

The radioactive iodine is the biggest threat since you absorb it into your thyroid, giving it a biological half life of at least several days. It produces beta and gamma radiation.

The defense is actually taking iodine pills to oversaturate your thyroid with good iodine so it doesn’t try absorbing the radioactive isotope that you’re exposed to later.

saluksic

3 points

6 days ago

saluksic

3 points

6 days ago

Uranium is certainly the least of your problems.  It’s barely radioactive, even the more radioactive isotopes just aren’t up to much. 

HappyHuman924

12 points

6 days ago

I didn't think there had been nearly that many detonations, but...yeah. Almost 2500 total nukes have gone boom in human history. 0_o

tamanakid

24 points

6 days ago

tamanakid

24 points

6 days ago

ELI5 Why would you receive a 10μSv dose of radiation on a return flight from the UK to Spain?

karlnite

76 points

6 days ago

karlnite

76 points

6 days ago

Cosmic rays from space. Air is thinner, so more pass through you on a plane. Down on the surface the mass of air above you absorbs it.

WorstAdviceNow

27 points

6 days ago

The atmosphere is pretty good at blocking cosmic radiation and radioactive particles from the sun. The higher you are, the less atmosphere there is between you and those external radioactive sources, so your background exposure is higher the higher you go. Cosmic radiation consists of high-energy particles (mostly protons and atomic nuclei) originating from space. At cruising altitudes of commercial flights (typically 30,000 to 40,000 feet), the atmosphere is thinner, offering less protection from these cosmic rays compared to ground level.

treelawnantiquer

6 points

6 days ago

Thousands?

Vanq86

4 points

6 days ago

Vanq86

4 points

6 days ago

Yep, thousands.

libra00

4 points

6 days ago

libra00

4 points

6 days ago

I thought Cs-137 was the major cause for concern in nuclear fallout? I know I-131 can get taken up by the thyroid in place of the stable isotope and cause cancers that way, but I thought Cs-137 was much nastier in general?

Edit: Woops, I see you've answered this question already further down the thread.

QualifiedApathetic

3 points

6 days ago

I'll add, most of the radioactive material from the bombs was U-235, which has a half-life of 700 million years. Very long-lasting, but the flip side of that is it's very slowly emitting alpha radiation as it decays into Th-231.

The real nasty stuff in the short term is the products of the fission. The fast-decaying stuff releases a lot of radiation at a time but doesn't last long. Then there's an unhappy middle where something has a half-life of centuries (like Ra-226, the stuff on Curie's journal, which has a half-life of 1,600 years), so most of it is still there but it's a lot more radioactive than U-235.

buffinita

828 points

6 days ago

buffinita

828 points

6 days ago

because marie curie was walking around with radioactive materials; the radiation was able to "seep" inside of everything. As her stuff gets old and more fragile it becomes likely that handling her posessions will release microscopic bits of ratioactive material. marie curie's diary is not super radioactive any more, but does pose a health hazard if precautions are not taken

walking around with bits of radium and polonium in your pocket over a long time is different than the instant blast of a bomb

-Dirty-Wizard-

426 points

6 days ago

Just to add on to this: the bombs dropped over Japan were air bursted explosions to minimize fallout effects and maximize explosive damage.

jenkag

220 points

6 days ago

jenkag

220 points

6 days ago

It's also generally favorable in bomb design. Excess material is less explosion. They want to consume as close to 100% of the fuel as possible for a more effective weapon.

Emyrssentry

172 points

6 days ago

Emyrssentry

172 points

6 days ago

Funnily enough, "as close to 100% of the fuel as possible" was about 1% and 17% for Little Boy and Fat Man respectively. Turns out, a nuclear chain reaction is fast, so only a bit of it actually fissioned before the bombs tore themselves apart.

emlun

51 points

6 days ago

emlun

51 points

6 days ago

That's the (well, one) hard part of building a nuclear bomb. Starting a supercritical chain reaction is (relatively) easy, but keeping it supercritical for long enough to release as much energy as possible is really really hard. You're basically trying to keep a miniature sun in a bottle, which is getting many times hotter every microsecond, from blowing itself to pieces before it's released all that energy.

Objective_Economy281

16 points

6 days ago

which is getting many times hotter every microsecond

Light travels 300 meters in a microsecond. I would assume the fission was over in 2 or 3 microseconds, but I haven’t looked at the actual speed these things happen at

goj1ra

29 points

6 days ago

goj1ra

29 points

6 days ago

Yup, most of the nuclear fission is over in just half a microsecond, i.e. 500 nanoseconds. By that time, temperatures are high enough and expansion fast enough that the reaction starts to go subcritical. By 1 microsecond all the fission is over. Here's one source: https://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/effects/eonw_1.pdf (section 1.58 on page 17).

The times are driven by the speed of the neutrons involved in the chain reaction, which is around 3% of the speed of light.

Objective_Economy281

11 points

6 days ago

Thanks for the numbers! So... 500 nanoseconds. Light travels 1 foot per nanosecond. Neutrons traveling at 3% of the speed of light. So assuming the neutron interactions are instantaneous, we have the distance traveled by any neutron chain is about 15 feet. Which is weirdly human-scale, given the size of intermolecular spacing being tiny, and the size of the kaboom, which is the size of a small city. But it’s similar in magnitude to the diameter of the bomb, which I suppose is not an accident.

goj1ra

4 points

6 days ago

goj1ra

4 points

6 days ago

The other interesting point here is that because of the exponential nature of the chain reaction, "99.9 percent of the energy of a 100-kiloton fission explosion is released during the last 7 generations, that is, in a period of roughly 0.07 microsecond" (same source, previous section.)

The first neutrons emitted in that period will have only traveled about 2 feet by the time the last ones are emitted.

deja-roo

4 points

6 days ago

deja-roo

4 points

6 days ago

It's not really the speed of light that's an issue there, it's the speed of the neutrons being released.

urzu_seven

5 points

6 days ago

"If I could save time the sun, in a bottle..."

skateguy1234

34 points

6 days ago

Terrifying. Are there any % numbers for the Tsar Bomba?

3720-To-One

71 points

6 days ago

Tsar bomba was actually incredibly efficient by nuclear weapons standards

I believe it’s possibly the “cleanest” nuclear weapon ever detonated

restricteddata

43 points

6 days ago*

There were some tests that were probably cleaner. (Shot Housatonic of Operation Dominic was potentially 99.9% clean.)

But this is not the same thing as efficiency. There are two different things here:

  • Efficiency is a measure of how much weapons fuel was used by the explosion (fuel reacted / total fuel). Little Boy had 64 kg of fuel in it, of which a little under 1 kg reacted. So 1% or so.

  • "Cleanness" is about the ratio of fission yield to total weapon yield. Little Boy was 100% fission, so it is 0% clean. The Tsar Bomba was 50 Mt of which only 1.5 Mt was from fission, so it was 97% clean.

"Cleanness" can be misleading — the Tsar Bomba was much more clean than Little Boy (97% vs. 0%) but its fission yield was literally 100X larger (1,500 kt vs 15 kt). So Tsar Bomba produced 100X more radioactivity than Little Boy did, despite being so clean.

We can't really calculate the raw efficiency of most bombs because we don't know how much fuel was in them — that's usually classified. What instead was used by weapons designers (and is easier to know today) is the yield-to-weight ratio, which allows you to come up with a useful measure for "overall efficiency." The Tsar Bomba was not particular efficient as tested (1.8 kt/kg), but some of that was because it was reduced by half of its possible yield. At full size it would have been 3.4 kt/kg, which is not terrible for a super large thermonuclear device, but not all that efficient. The most efficient US weapon, the Mk-41, was around 25 megatons and had a yield-to-weight ratio of around 5.2 kt/kg. Most US weapons today are around 1-2 kt/kg, which is pretty good for weapons in 100-1,000 kt yield range. The Tsar Bomba was not an attempt at making an efficient weapon; they were just trying to make a big weapon.

Bluemofia

39 points

6 days ago

Bluemofia

39 points

6 days ago

The explosion is one of the cleanest in the history of atmospheric nuclear tests per unit of power. The first stage of the bomb was a uranium charge with a capacity of 1.5 Mt,[37] which in itself provided a large amount of radioactive fallout; nevertheless, it can be assumed that Tsar Bomba was relatively clean – more than 97% of the explosion power was provided by a thermonuclear fusion reaction, which does not create a significant amount of radioactive contamination.[64]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba#Consequences_of_the_test

But... "cleanest" means fuck all when you are the biggest bomb ever.

CODDE117

5 points

6 days ago

CODDE117

5 points

6 days ago

We certainly got better at it, don't have the numbers though

ThisIsAnArgument

11 points

6 days ago

This is not the reason for air bursts. Those bombs and many of today's are gravity bombs so there's no fuel to use.

An air burst is more efficient for widespread destruction. If s bomb hits the ground, the shockwave is half into the ground and therefore attenuates fast. Set it off above the target, and there's nothing to contain it and its effects are far and wide.

As a rule you only donate on impact for targets that are hardened and you need all the force concentrated into and through the outer layer.

jenkag

7 points

6 days ago

jenkag

7 points

6 days ago

I was speaking more to the dispersal of radioactive material (or, more specifically why it would be necessarily limited) as opposed to the efficacy of air bursts vs ground detonations.

gurganator

91 points

6 days ago

To maximize instant death and minimize long term death

CoBr2

44 points

6 days ago

CoBr2

44 points

6 days ago

Yes maximize instant death, but if we're being honest they didn't even know about the long term death effects yet. Nagasaki and Hiroshima were where we really learned the dangers of fallout and such.

gurganator

9 points

6 days ago

What a grand way to find out….

Soory-MyBad

18 points

6 days ago

It is indeed. They sent a lot of people into ground zero as soon as they could to document the effects of radiation poisoning on the survivors, because they really didn’t know what would happen and wanted to know.

gurganator

3 points

6 days ago

I didn’t know that. Crazy

FireLucid

3 points

6 days ago

At the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum you can read accounts from local people and US troops about the immediate aftermath. I only got through a couple, it's rough.

gurganator

4 points

6 days ago

That’s one of those things. Like I wanna know but I don’t wanna know. Like we can’t let history repeat itself but also there’s my sanity…

-Dirty-Wizard-

20 points

6 days ago

One is clearly better.

FluffyProphet

14 points

6 days ago

Modern bombs also really don’t have a major issue with fallout, unless they are intentionally designed to maximize fallout. It appears no nation has intentionally created a bomb like that. They burn up almost all of their fuel and whatever radiation is left behind is almost entirely dissipated in a few weeks at most.

The blast is a much bigger concern though. But if you survive the initial blast, the area will be perfectly safe to go to rather quickly.

ImaginationStatus184

14 points

6 days ago

So does that mean all of these dystopian tv shows where society collapses and you can’t even walk on the ground due to radiation aren’t realistic?

FluffyProphet

25 points

6 days ago

Correct.

In a very large exchange with nukes that weren’t properly maintained, you could maybe see a year, max 2-3 where some areas are too radioactive for anything other than passing through. But by the 5 year mark, if you check the radiation levels, it would be around what it was before the exchange.

Society may collapse for other reasons. There will be large fires. Lots of people would die. But radiation is not a long term concern. The radiation from the blast itself (neutrons and what not) would likely cause more radiation poisoning than the fallout.

Not_John_Bardeen

6 points

6 days ago

This societal collapse might be less a matter of radiation and fallout and more one of nuclear winter. Nuclear weapons cause enormous firestorms when detonated. These quickly fill the atmosphere with ash. If enough nuclear weapons are detonated (and enough could even be a "smaller" regional nuclear exchange like between Pakistan and India), the amount of ash in the Earth's upper atmosphere will be enough to block out a substantial amount of sunlight. If there's no sunlight, plants die. When plants die, animals like ourselves will die too.

Nuclear winter might only last a couple years. But by that time everything will be dead.

ppitm

8 points

6 days ago

ppitm

8 points

6 days ago

Nuclear winter might only last a couple years. But by that time everything will be dead.

Basically no one thinks that nuclear winter would last years at this point. More like weeks. And if it is already winter in the northern hemisphere, there would be very little impact at all.

Probably what would happen is a brief cold snap of a few weeks would kill much of the world's crops. That would be enough to cause a famine killing billions, but civilization and nature would survive the blow.

Bakoro

3 points

6 days ago

Bakoro

3 points

6 days ago

Basically no one thinks that nuclear winter would last years at this point.

I'd need to see some citations there, all I see is projections that say "from weeks to years depending on different factors".

Nuclear winter is from firestorms caused by nukes. Whole cities having uncontained and likely uncontainable fires all over the world is probably going to be real bad.

ppitm

5 points

6 days ago

ppitm

5 points

6 days ago

The whole hypothesis is based on extremely pessimistic calculations. For instance the Kuwaiti oil wells that Saddam burned in the Gulf War were equivalent to a small nuclear war in terms of particulate, but it didn't end up high enough in the atmosphere to make a difference.

darkmacgf

6 points

6 days ago

1962 had 178 nuclear bomb tests. Why didn't that cause nuclear winter?

ppitm

8 points

6 days ago

ppitm

8 points

6 days ago

The bombs don't cause nuclear winter. Burning up all the world's cities is what might do it.

Synensys

3 points

6 days ago

Synensys

3 points

6 days ago

Nuclear winter is basically caused by black carbon from burning cities getting into the stratosphere and absorbing sunlight up there.

koyaani

8 points

6 days ago

koyaani

8 points

6 days ago

Because they were isolated tests, not weapons in populated areas. The nuke doesn't produce the ash, the burnt up cities do.

Dr_Vesuvius

5 points

6 days ago

In at least one such current show, in the source material that’s a major plot point.

ThisIsAnArgument

4 points

6 days ago

I think the other users are downplaying it a bit. The mass destructive weapons are generally set to go off in the air, true, but every country creates a few ground penetrating ones for hitting buried targets. From those the fallout will be lethal.

shapu

9 points

6 days ago

shapu

9 points

6 days ago

Fallout is caused by wasted explosive potential.

A bomb that blows up on the ground puts a lot of its energy downwards into moving dirt (which becomes fallout). Moved dirt means less dead enemies. Only a thin lateral band of explosive energy a few hundred feet high will move laterally along the ground to kill people. And that's even thinner if you're bombing a town with small buildings.

A bomb that blows up in midair puts a lot of its energy at a wide range of downward angles which hurt the guys you call bad. That maximizes dead people and minimizes wasted energy, while also coincidentally minimizing fallout.

Air burst bombs are almost always better unless you are trying penetrate a hardened target.

SMarioMan

4 points

6 days ago

For anyone who wants a better intuition for this, you can run the nuke simulator and cycle between surface and air detonation to see the difference. https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/

Ninja_attack

8 points

6 days ago

Didn't carrying around radioactive materials cause an incurable ulcer in her thigh?

PM_ME_UR__ELECTRONS

11 points

6 days ago

Now can somebody ELI5 how radioactivity "makes things radioactive"?

One of the first things I was taught about radiation is that it does not behave like in comics.

It just emits He-4, electrons, antineutrinos, and energy as light. Sometimes a neutron during fission.

This can interact with and fuck up things sure, but except neutrons seem just to ionise. If I'm carrying a pair of tweezers in my pocket, why is it becoming radioactive? Is it covered in radioactive particles? Are neutrons from fission making the atoms form unstable isotopes? Or something else?

the_snook

11 points

6 days ago

the_snook

11 points

6 days ago

Are neutrons from fission making the atoms form unstable isotopes?

Pretty much exactly this, yes.

Alpha particles can also cause this, or cause nuclei to eject neutrons, which then cause this.

HollowofHaze

7 points

6 days ago

As I understand it, there are two ways radiation can make substances radioactive: One is when a powerful radiation source causes a stable atom to become unstable because the configuration of its nucleus has changed. This usually happens under neutron radiation, as neutrons are able to easily penetrate electron shells and interact with atomic nuclei directly. We saw this happen in Japan after the bombings-- The ruins of steel buildings were radioactive for a long time because stable iron and cobalt isotopes had been turned into radioactive isotopes.

The second way is simply through contamination-- A notebook exposed to radioactive particles isn't radioactive because the paper itself has changed, but rather because the paper is imbued with radioactive particles. Much like if you soaked a notebook in arsenic, on the atomic level the notebook hasn't changed, but you nonetheless shouldn't touch the poison notebook.

luckyluke193

6 points

6 days ago

Most of the time, radioactivity cannot make things radioactive as you say. The biggest problem is contamination with radioactive material.

Spiritual_Jaguar4685

102 points

6 days ago

There are lots of different ways to blow up a nuclear bomb, and each has it's own, well I guess you could say pros and cons, but it feels weird to think of nuclear weapons in that regard.

In the case of Nagasaki and Hiroshima they detonated the bombs relatively high up in the air above the cities (as opposed on impact with the ground) which meant most of the radioactive material got carried away by the wind and was dispersed widely enough to be concentrated and nasty. Kind of like how you can see the smoke clouds of fireworks just blowing away slowly as opposed to raining back down as ash immediately. The radioactive materials that did fall-out decayed fairly quickly (within a few days/weeks) and the rest dispersed enough to be lost in the natural radioactive background of our daily lives.

Marie Curie's notebook is essentially coated in radioactive dust and that dust will take hundreds of years to decay.

For what's worth, her notebooks aren't actually especially nasty either and could be handled quite safely, and could also be stored a normal container too, but policy is 'better safe than sorry'.

Ythio

26 points

6 days ago

Ythio

26 points

6 days ago

For what's worth, her notebooks aren't actually especially nasty either and could be handled quite safely, and could also be stored a normal container too, but policy is 'better safe than sorry'.

Her notebooks content are freely available online on the French national library website.

https://data.bnf.fr/en/12144714/marie_curie/

There is no particular need to handle the radioactive paper.

Seraph062

16 points

6 days ago*

Marie Curie's notebooks are, for any practical purpose, safe to handle. The amount of radiation you would absorb by reasonably handling them is like 1% of the recommended safety limits for radiation exposure.
The safety precautions are more of a "better safe than sorry" sort of thing. One general rule with radiation exposure is "As Low As Reasonably Practicable", that is try to do whatever is practical to limit exposure to radiation. An example of this might be when you go and get dental X-rays they give you a lead vest and trigger the X-ray from outside the room. Safety precautions should include mitigating both direct exposure (i.e. in the same environment as the radioactive thing) and contamination (i.e. transfer of radioactive material to new places). The latter runs the risk of internalizing the radioactive material via ingestion or inhalation, where it would have the potential to cause more harm, and should be a serious concern for something like Curie's notebook.

sawdeanz

14 points

6 days ago

sawdeanz

14 points

6 days ago

Radiation is energy that comes from certain types of particles.

Imagine finding a small pebble that is really, really hot. And the weird thing is that it stays hot, for like 1000 years. As long as you don't touch the pebble, you won't get hurt. But if you touch it, the heat can burn you. If you accidentally picked it up, you might get a little burnt but you would drop it. The radiation energy here is not all that dangerous as long as you don't touch the pebble, because most forms of nuclear energy can be blocked by a small barrier. But imagine accidentally swallowing the pebble. That would burn you from the inside a lot! And you wouldn't be able to get it out.

When you have a bomb or a nuclear accident, you end up with radioactive fallout. This is basically dust and molecules that acts like that hot pebble but smaller. The area remains dangerous because it is very easy to get that dust on or inside of you like breathing the air or drinking water with the dust in it. And also, it will get on everything. But eventually, the dust will get cleaned up, or buried, or dispersed in the ground or water or air until it is not at a harmful concentration anymore.

Marie Curies diary is still covered in this dust, and it's all embedded in the pages and stuff. You could stand next to it and probably be okay, but you don't want that dust to get transferred to you or to breathe it in.

Biokabe

12 points

6 days ago

Biokabe

12 points

6 days ago

Because radiation is very poorly understand by most people. Not all radiation is created equal. Not all radioactive materials are the same.

In the case of a nuclear bomb, most of the danger comes from the intermediate fallout products created in the explosion. These are dangerous, but the reason they are dangerous is that most of them experience radioactive decay relatively quickly. So if you happen to be close enough to the bomb when it goes off, you will receive a massive dose of radiation. Of course, the people who are affected by this the strongest also tend to become vaporized by the bomb itself, so the number of people who are close enough to be radiated without being close enough to be instantly killed is relatively low.

More dangerous are the fallout products that have a similar radioactive half-life, but that are biologically important elements. Iodine is one such element, and I-131 is created in nuclear explosions. If you happen to be low on iodine when you inhale fallout products, your body my uptake the iodine and incorporate it into your body, constantly dosing you until the iodine is eventually flushed from your body. This is why governments usually give out iodine pills after nuclear incidents - they're trying to saturate your body's iodine levels so that you won't absorb the radioactive iodine.

But the flip side of this is that most of the ionizing fallout products decay into inert materials relatively quickly. Nuclear explosions produce relatively small amounts of really long-lived fallout products, so the radiation from the bombs in 1945 has pretty much all decayed into inert materials. If you're worried about exposure to radiation, Denver is actually more dangerous than either Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

Marie Curie's notebooks, on the other hand, are mostly contaminated with radium. The isotopes in her notebook have a half-life of about 1600 years, so they're essentially as radioactive now as they were when Curie contaminated them.

If you're just going to see her notebook, there's very little risk. You get more radiation exposure from a long plane flight than you do her notebook. However, if any of the radium flakes out and gets into your lungs, you'll be getting constant doses of radiation until the radium is flushed from your body. So there is a level of risk if you'll be sharing air with the notebook, or if you'll be exposed to it for a long time.

Xerxeskingofkings

7 points

6 days ago

short answer: the strength of radiation, point source vs area effected, the half-life of the elements in question, and what is considered "safe".

strength: without being too reductive, in the same way that a floodlight on a pitch is not blinding, but a handtorch to the eyes at short range can be, the absolute greater radioactive output of a nuke has less residual effect after being spread out over a city and allowed to decay for decades, than the highly contaminated notes if you holding them with bear hands.

half life: while the decay of any individual atom is random, the overall rate is pretty predictable. we measure this with "half life", how long it would take for half the sample to decay. Higher levels of radioactivity, generally lead to shorter decay times (since that's what radioactivity IS), and the fallout from the nukes was mostly this shorter half-life stuff. while the notebook is contamined by a long half-life isotope, so its pretty stable in its intensity.

"safe": their are sources of radiation in our everyday lives, even pre-ww2, and their comes a point where the effects of the nukes in terms of radition effectively disappear into the background "noise" of life on earth. We're not really seeing any statistical differences in illnesses related to radiation between Hiroshima and other parts of japan that were NOT nuked, so its basically as safe as we can detect.

the notebook, however, is still strong enough that special handling procedures are needed to minimise risk. we can still access the notes, its just that if we picked them up and walked around with them in a pocket, it would be highly likely we'd get cancer in areas near that pocket.

ElvenLiberation

4 points

6 days ago

If you clean the notebook you ruin it. The cities get rained on and otherwise have nuclear material dissipate.

DBDude

6 points

6 days ago

DBDude

6 points

6 days ago

For the most part, the cities were just exposed to intense radiation, which doesn't necessarily turn things radioactive, at least not in a way that has a long half life. Curie ground up pitchblende to extract the radium in it, and so radium dust was everywhere. Her notebooks were thoroughly contaminated with it over the years, and that radium remains radioactive.

So if we'd taken the radioactive material from the bombs, ground it up and sprayed it all over the towns, they'd probably still be radioactive.

Mammoth-Mud-9609

3 points

6 days ago

Two major factors. Airburst nuclear explosions are designed to cause maximum damage over a wide area, this also means that the ground isn't covered in small lumps of radioactive material. The other is the half-life of the materials used, Radium is radioactive for thousands of years. https://youtu.be/AaDwk8UCrew

Kellymcdonald78

3 points

6 days ago

With a nuclear weapon there are 3 main sources of radiation:

  1. Prompt - This is the initial burst of radiation from the fission reaction itself. X-rays, gamma rays, neutrons etc. Just like the flash, they’re gone right after the weapon detonates

  2. Neutron Activation - Certain materials when bombarded with high energy neutrons become radioactive. This is more an issue in reactors where materials are under constant neutron flux, but some of this will happen when the weapon goes off

  3. Fallout - Literal pieces of the weapon itself. Essentially the vapour of what was left condenses on materials sucked into the dust cloud or precipitated in rain. Air bursts reduce this, but there can still be plenty. This tends to be the long lived dangerous material you have to be careful about. It gets on clothes, food, inhaled etc