I recently went down a virtual rabbit hole on the “Demon Core” incidents in the late 1940’s and it got me thinking about protective equipment in regards to dealing with radiation. How does it work? Are there certain materials or designs that are more effective than others?
Apologies in advance if this has already been answered.
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They don’t, if we’re talking about gamma radiation.
An NBC suit would not have helped Slotkin in the slightest.
In short, there are 3 main types of ionizing nuclear radiation. Ionizing means that when it hits something, it has enough power to knock off an electron or break a molecular bond – this is a problem for living things because it tends to damage and destroy cells, particularly by damaging the DNA that gives instructions to the molecular machinery inside.
* Gamma rays are very high energy and pass through matter readily. It is the most dangerous, because it penetrates the body deeply and does a lot of damage, and because the only thing that shields against it is a LOT of mass between you and the emitter.
* Beta radiation can only penetrate a half inch or so at most. Thick clothing or a regular wall will protect against most beta rays.
* Alpha radiation can only penetrate a couple of mm. You can stop alpha radiation with as little as a piece of paper.
So. When Slotkin fumbled the screwdriver and caused a criticality incident with the demon core, everybody in the room was bathed in a high dose of gamma rays. They were dead men walking, even if they’d been wearing full NBC suits. It’s a big part of the reason why after this and a couple other incidents, future criticality experiments were conducted remotely – with the scientists behind adequate shielding.
Shielding against gamma radiation (such as you’d use for a fallout shelter) is typically rated in “halving-thicknesses,” or the amount of a given material that will deflect or absorb roughly half of incoming gamma rays. Roughly 2.4 in of concrete, 3.6 inches of packed earth, .4 in of lead, etc = 1 halving-thickness. “Adequate” radiation shielding (at least for a fallout shelter) is roughly 10 halving-thicknesses – 24 inches of solid concrete or 3 feet of packed earth overhead. It reduces incoming gamma rays by a factor of about 1000 – generally enough to keep you safe from even something emitting a LOT of gamma radiation.
You can see how wearing 4 inches of lead shielding is… not practical, yes? It’s why there IS no wearable “radiation suit” like in video games. ETA: Some kind of futuristic gamma suit would have to have a personal magnetic field strong enough to redirect the radiation away from you or something.
So, why do we even have NBC suits in real life? It’s to keep Nuclear-Biological-Chemical substances off our skin.
* In the event of a radiological incident, particles that release gamma rays decay relatively quickly (higher energy release = the “battery” runs down quicker), but alpha and beta emitters last longer.
* Alpha- and beta-emitting particles can’t do much more than give you a “nuclear sunburn” *unless* you ingest/inhale them (alpha emitters don’t even really do that unless you get them directly on your skin). If they get inside you, they can damage internal organs and increase your risk of cancer. You see where we’re going here?
* The suit and mask keeps radioactive dust off your skin and out of your hair, eyes, mouth, and lungs.
* When you leave the hazard area, you remove the suit carefully and go through a decontamination shower (ideally) to make sure you don’t bring those particles with you where they can float around and contaminate food and water or be inhaled.
The same principle works for areas contaminated with dangerous pathogens or chemical agents (assuming it’s not something that will damage the suit directly). You want to keep them off your skin and out of your lungs until you can decontaminate the outside of the suit and take it off in a safe area.
Bonus: Potassium Iodide (KI) is often touted as a remedy in a radiological disaster, but it **only protects against one specific isotope**. Iodine-131, a radioactive version of Iodine, is produced by nuclear weapons or certain kinds of nuclear disasters. Your thyroid gland likes to store iodine for use in producing certain hormones. It can’t tell the difference between regular Iodine and radioactive Iodine in your diet. The reason you take KI is to saturate your thyroid with normal Iodine so it won’t absorb any of the radioactive kind that you might ingest in contaminated food and water. If you did get I-131 in your thyroid, it could irradiate and kill your thyroid, damage thyroid function, or just increase your risk of getting thyroid cancer in a couple of decades (depending on the dose you got). KI won’t do jack to protect you from gamma rays, or from any other kind of alpha or beta emitter (like Radium, or Cesium-137 or Strontium-90) that you might ingest.
When dealing with radioactive environments, those suits don’t necessarily protect against the radiation, they prevent you from being covered in and breathing in radioactive particles / dust. The protection from radiation comes from wearing a dosimeter to monitor how much radiation you’re exposed to and limiting the time spent in the environment.
Tbh. I’d say their biggest benefit is not keeping out the radiation itself but radioactive materials like dust particles which without a suit could be breathed in irradiating you from the inside.
When speaking of radiation there are generally three types of harmful radiation from radioactive minerals we talk about. Alpha radiation causes the most damage but can be stopped by something as light as skin. Beta radiation is less harmful but will be stopped by a concrete or lead wall. And gamma radiation is the least harmful but is generally impossible to stop. The demon core emitted mostly gamma radiation so the only thing that helped was distance from it.
But there are a lot of radioactive minerals which emit alpha radiation, and these might be generated in nuclear processes. While these particles are generally harmless to handle as the radiation have a hard time getting past your outer layers of skin you do not want them to enter your body at all. Even just getting some of this dust sticking to your skin can be enough to cause focused areas of radiation poisoning. These are the types of materials used as radioactive poisons for assassinations as it is harmless for those handling it but lethal for those eating it or breathing it inn. The biohazard protective clothing will help prevent people from getting into contact with these materials. Similarly removing clothing and taking showers are methods used to remove radioactive materials from someone who have been exposed to them.
When you are working with nuclear materials, unless there is something like the demon core incidents, the rays that hit you are the least thing to worry about. Sure, over time they do harm, but if you monitor your exposure and do not stay in the radioactive area for longer than necessary, the damage is minimal. That is what dosimeters are for, basically a little badge you wear that measures the radiation you received and when you have gotten too much, you cannot work in radioactive areas anymore until your body had time to heal or you risk your health. Now obviously, that is not a “straw that broke the camel’s back” situation; really every bit of radiation does very minor harm, but there needs to be a line on how much harm is acceptable somewhere. People who die from acute radiation poisoning, like those exposed to the demon core, typically get hit with more radiation within a few seconds than most normal people, including nuclear technicians or airline personnel, experience in a lifetime.
As others have already brought up, the biggest acute danger from working within radioactive areas is radioactive dust getting inside your body. If that happens, there are two things much worse than environmental radiation. First, the radioactive material is much closer to your organs than it would be were it outside your body. Second, you no longer leave the source of radiation behind the moment you exit the area, you take it with you. Basically, the exposure never ends, and over time you will absorb the full dose of radiation that particular piece of radioactive material could provide, unless you somehow get it out of your body first. It sticks with you for however long it takes to decay, but the faster it decays, the heavier it hits you:
Take iodine 131, a powerful alpha source. That stuff deposits in your thyroid and half of it decays every few days. With enough of that stuff, you can practically burn away your thyroid, which is why after nuclear power plant accidents you may see iodine tablets being distributed to people in the nearby area, to flush out the iodine 131 with nice and stable iodine 127. Conversely, if you have an overgrown thyroid, one treatment might be giving you a small dose of iodine 131 to basically destroy the excess, but that process requires careful calibration or you end up with too little functioning thyroid.
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