# Does fission inherently involve emitting ionizing radiation? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 10, 2023, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-fission-inherently-involve-emitting-ionizing-radiation/989877 "2023-09-10T14:50:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2023, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-fission-inherently-involve-emitting-ionizing-radiation/989877/1 "2023-09-10T14:50:23Z")
I was thinking about future energy sources, and how fission is always considered a dead end, because it involves materials that are radioactive and probably also toxic. But is this necessarily the case? Could there hypothetically be a material that isn’t very radioactive but when we shoot neutrons at it, say, transitions into something else not very radioactive, and only kicks out lots of energy plus neutrinos? (Notice: neutrinos out, not neutrons) ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2023, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-fission-inherently-involve-emitting-ionizing-radiation/989877/2 "2023-09-10T15:04:32Z")
I guess, answering my own question, it’s pretty hard to hit the nucleus with anything. So a non-chain reaction fission reaction would require prohibitive numbers of particles and energy input. And obviously any chain-reaction based reaction is going to involve kicking out ionizing radiation. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2023, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-fission-inherently-involve-emitting-ionizing-radiation/989877/3 "2023-09-10T15:09:46Z")
ISTM “lots of energy” = ionising; even gamma rays are bad for you. NB neutrinos may be weakly interacting but the assoicated beta particles are already ionizing, moreso than gamma rays. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2023, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-fission-inherently-involve-emitting-ionizing-radiation/989877/4 "2023-09-10T15:16:31Z")
But is there an intrinsic reason why a substantial portion of the energy needs to be in the form of gamma rays? Gamma rays are a byproduct in current reactors, they aren’t the way we get energy out. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2023, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-fission-inherently-involve-emitting-ionizing-radiation/989877/5 "2023-09-10T15:27:33Z")
Some elements can decay via “electron capture” instead of fission or alpha/beta/gamma/… decay, but then what? The “ionizing” neutrino is not going to be useful for getting energy out (plus you will probably still get some X-rays or high-energy electrons anyway). ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2023, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-fission-inherently-involve-emitting-ionizing-radiation/989877/6 "2023-09-10T15:39:11Z")
Thermal energy. That’s the main way we already get energy out. I didn’t mean we capture the neutrinos, I just mentioned them because AIUI, pretty much anything that happens to a nucleus kicks out neutrinos, but they’re harmless and we don’t care about them. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2023, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-fission-inherently-involve-emitting-ionizing-radiation/989877/7 "2023-09-10T20:18:22Z")
Big, heavy fission fragments (which are themselves radioactive…) are also ionizing as they slam into things. There was an idea to construct a fission-fragment reactor > **[Fission fragment reactor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fission_fragment_reactor)** > > Similar to how the fission-fragment rocket produces thrust, a fission fragment reactor is a nuclear reactor that generates electricity by decelerating an ion beam of fission byproducts instead of using nuclear reactions to generate heat. By doing so, it bypasses the Carnot cycle and can achieve efficiencies of up to 90% instead of 40-45% attainable by efficient turbine-driven thermal reactors. The fission fragment ion beam would be passed through a magnetohydrodynamic generator to produce electri... that extracts energy from fission reactions > **[805252.pdf](https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc740759/m2/1/high_res_d/805252.pdf)** > > 483.10 KB apparently it uses a magnetohydrodynamic generator.