I’ve been researching nuclear energy and radiation in an effort to understand it. I don’t understand why I’m seeing a lot of info saying a nuclear bomb’s radiation dies out in about 10 years, but a nuclear reactor explosion like Chernobyl will take thousands of years. What’s the difference?
EDIT: Okay, so what I’m seeing is I didn’t account for the differences in types and sheer amounts of fuel for each kind of reaction. I’m not a chemist or physicist or anything. I just like learning stuff. 😁
These explanations make a lot of sense, so to those of you who didn’t answer the wrongway and provided helpful and educational responses, thank you.
In: Chemistry
A radioactive substance is just that, one that releases radio frequency radiation on its own. Different substances have different characteristics but the one that you’re asking about is half-life or the amount of time it takes the element to break down so as to be half as radioactive as it currently is.
The key thing to understand about half life is that it is inversely proportionate to the intensity of the radiation so the nuclear material involved in a bomb, designed to instantaneously generate an enormous amount of energy has a relatively short half life while the nuclear material in a power plant like Chernobyl that was designed to produce constant, regulated heat for long long periods of time has a much longer half life
That having been said, the radioactive material leaked in Chernobyl was a complex blend of elements the most dangerous of which had short enough half life that even now a person could more or less safely go actually see the “elephants foot” with their own eyes for a few minutes and only soak up as much radiation as a couple dozen chest x rays.
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