I understand something can become radioactive when it is polluted with radioactive material, The Claw (the crane which was used to clean up Chernobyl) comes into my mind. There is bad stuff on it -> radioactive.
But what about materials which are exposed to emission only? What changes in the material?
What happens for example when a steal plate is put inside LHC and bombarded with high energy particles? Does the protons collide with the electrons, become neutrons, so the iron in the “steal plate” changes into an isotope which is unstable, so it becomes radioactive?
In: Physics
Alpha particles and neutrons can sometimes be absorbed by nuclei to produce radioactive isotopes. Probably the most well known example is Cobalt-60, which is produced when steel (which commonly contains a small amount of cobalt) is exposed to neutrons (for example in a nuclear reactor, or from a nuclear detonation) and stable Cobalt-59 absorbs one neutron to become Cobalt-60. Co-60 is a gamma-ray emitter with a relatively long half-life so it’s useful for certain medical and scientific applications, but has also caused a number of contamination incidents.
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