For instance, I recently watched [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJ8cYheR5xo) video, and during it they explain that the bodies of the technicians at the SL-1 site had to be autopsied at great length from the doctors, because their bodies were still emitting extreme radioactivity.
how does radioactive material cause other, normally benign, material to take on radioactivity?
In: 90
Neutron activation. Neutrons get deposited in the nucleus of a non-radioactive isotope, and turn it into a radioactive isotope.
Dust. Radioactive dust gets stuck in hair, lungs, saliva, stomachs, inside and on a person.
Then, when they go places, that dust continues to be radioactive, and the total amount of dust can make the “person” radioactive.
You’re not really taking any stable stuff inside the person and turning it radioactive. That can happen, but it’s unlikely. You’re just adding dust.
In general radioactive materials do not make other materials radioactive. The main problem is contamination, where radioactive material is physically transferred to another object. So dust or gases get stuck on or in the bodies.
Compare it to if you go into a building where it has been a fire, Your clothes will when you get out smell of smoke because stuff got stuck to them and is slowly released. Your clothes are likly visibly dirty if you come in direct contact with stuff in the building. You will have breath in some practice that was suspended in the air too.
That is how you typically get radioactive contamination, stuff get stuck to and in you. The amount of highly radiative element that is needed for it to be dangerous is tiny.
It is possible for radiation to make other materials radioactive. If the radiation is neutrons then they can be absorbed by atoms they hit and transmit them to another isotope that is radioactive. The amount of neutron radiation you typically see is quite low so this does not happen to a significant degree. You can get neutrons from atoms that are hit with other types of radiation too.
There is one major exception, nuclear reactors that run emit a lot of neutrons. So for example the walls of and around the reactor will absorb neturon and atoms get transmuted and become radioactive.
This happens naturally too, Comic rays will produce neutrons when atoms are hit with other things and contain neutrons too. When Nitogen-14 absorbs a neutron you get Carbon-14 and a proton. This is how we get a constant production of radioactive Carbon-14 that plants absorb alongside carbon-12. Carbon-14 will decay over time and it will not be added to nonliving things. So by messing the proportion of Carbon-14 vs. Cabon-14, we can tell how long ago somring was alive.
The majority of that radiation… simply put, the radioactive material from the reactor itself is on the bodies. If a nuclear reactor blows… well, there’s pressure that was released and it spreads the material that was inside the reactor outwards. These people got covered in it. It stuck to the fibers of their clothing and got onto the skin of the people themselves, some of it got inhaled, etc. I don’t know if the skin can absorb the material but if it does, it’s now under the skin. They are now effectively tiny bits of the reactor walking around.
Now the second half. The radiation itself can get into atoms and change their types, maybe into a radioactive atom. But generally the threat level from that radiation is minimal. An extra neutron into a Carbon atom could make it ratioactive, but it will likely just decay into nitrogen and become stable. It’s a one-for-one trade of a radiation particle. Even if you get a more unlucky trade than this one-for-one example, it’s still just one atom that’s been affected. Statistically speaking this additional radioactive material is harmless compared to what came off the reactor.
I build nuclear reactors for a living and you wouldn’t believe how strict testing is as we leave the plant to assure we don’t spread radioactive dust all over town. Looks like the other guys have addressed the dangers pretty well already.
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