What is radiation from nuclear explosions and how/why does it cause cancer?
In: R7 (Search First)
When an unstable atom decays into a smaller and more stable atom, up until it gets as small as iron it takes less energy for that smaller atom to exist
Because you can’t destroy that energy it gets released from the new atom as a photon of energy, which is what radiation is
The only radiation you have to worry about in this way is Alpha, Beta, and Gamma radiation
Alpha is the most readily absorbed by materials, but does the most damage if it does get inside of your body, Gamma is the best at getting inside of you but does the least damage when it does, and Beta is in between
If you get hit by that photon of energy and it isn’t absorbed, it can hit a piece of DNA, and 99% of the time it won’t do anything because we are constantly exposed to a low level of radiation and our DNA developed to self correct in most cases. But when it does hit something and can’t be corrected for, that damage causes the instructions the cell follows to start messing up, which can result in cancer.
As you might imagine, radiation is mostly dangerous when we are exposed to a lot of it all at once, or constantly for a long period of time
As for how a nuclear explosion works, we get a lot of unstable atoms, and introduce a lot of energy to force them to decay all at once, which releases huge amounts of radiation in one big boom. Because radiation is mostly dangerous when you get a lot of it at once, and nuclear bombs produce a LOT of radiation, that’s one of the reasons they are so dangerous
Latest Answers