Re:French institute suspects nuclear accident in Russia or K...
by petre on Friday November 10, 2017 @01:07PM
(#15671709)
Ionine pills are for I131, with a 8.9 day half life. It's basically gone in 3 months (1/2^10) but it's very radioactive until it decays. The rule of thumb is the shoter the half life, the worse the radiation. Of course, it also depends of the type of radiation. Some elements like Plutonim are also toxic, apart from being radioactive.
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Re:French institute suspects nuclear accident in Russia or K...
by disp1 on Friday November 10, 2017 @01:40PM
(#15671915)
I am curious about this "Rule of thumb."
Where is this a rule of thumb. Its by no way supported by science, nor is it implemented in the regulation of radionuclides.
When it comes to biological uptakes, shorter half-life usually means less dose than longer half-life radionuclides. This is primarily because effective dose calculations integrate the absorbed dose over a persons life (well for the purpose of comparing radiotoxicity they do). So a long-live alpha or beta emitter will be far worse than a short lived gamma, even though the range and energy will likely be much higher for the short lived gamma emitter.