I watched the first episode of Chernobyl last night and there were several parts where someone would touch an item that was exposed to radiation, and that would make them sick or injured.
So how does that work? Wouldn’t the subatomic particles and gamma rays just hit other inanimate objects, and that is it? Why would those other objects become radioactive? Like if you put a metal rod next to a radioactive item, why would the rod become radioactive? The atoms that are emitting radioactive particles are still in the radioactive item, not in the metal rod. Or does an atomic explosion cause these radioactive atoms to shower everything around them, and that is why other items because radioactive?
Also does radiation cause instant burns like in the show? I thought radiation damaged your DNA which is bad, but wouldn’t cause symptoms for a few hours or days. Shouldn’t a UV burn take several hours to start showing symptoms after it starts?
Something like a gamma ray can knock a neutron out of an atom. That free neutron then slams into another atom and gets absorbed, causing that atom to become unstable and radioactive. The same sort of thing can happen with other subatomic particles as well.
As for how quickly symptoms of radiation exposure appear, that depends a lot on the type of radiation and the dosage level. At very high exposure levels, it is possible for all kinds of symptoms to appear very quickly.
Also, an uncontained explosion like at Chernobyl sprays highly radioactive atoms all over the place; it’s not like all you have to worry about are a few stray neutrons or gamma rays.
ETA the greater the dose, the faster beta burns begin to manifest. If you pick up a “nuclear tan” without even a delay of a couple of hours, well, I wouldn’t start making long-term plans.
After Slotkin was exposed to high radiation levels in the “demon core #2” accident, he started throwing up within a few minutes, a sign of serious radiation poisoning.
While this is in principle possible, for an extremely high-energy gamma ray, it’s very rare. You’re much more likely to get transmutation from alpha particles, and more likely yet from neutrons.
And you can also get contamination, where bits of the original substance (usually in the form of dust) get on the new item. This can be addressed by thorough washing, if it’s the sort of thing that can be thoroughly washed.
The wiki for radiation burns is rather detailed, and suggests that the producers of Chernobyl are taking a bit of dramatic license with the rapidity of the onset of exposure symptoms. Radiation burn - Wikipedia
Not much though. Erythema, from that link, is not stated to be immediate with doses below 30 Gy. Which might be survivable, if an extremity or a tightly focused area was the only thing subjected to the dose, even if 36 Gy is easily 100 percent fatal as a whole body prompt dose. The poster aruqvan, in another thread discussing the show, mentioned her own radiation therapy, with a cumulative dose of, IIRC, 36 Gy.
Not all radiation, even of the same general type, is equal. I can imagine that, e.g., very high energy beta might lead to more immediate erythema than lesser energy particles.
No, those subatomic particles are hitting highly fissile material, setting off a chain reaction. Most atoms are not fissile, so a neutron hitting them shouldn’t set off a chain reaction.
I didn’t know about Neutron activation as posted by Beowulff but that explains it. I didn’t know so many different materials could become radioactive just by being exposed to radiation. I thought it had to be a very unstable atom for that to happen, but apparently not.
When I was in 2nd year Physics, some of us got to do more advanced labs. One I remember was irradiating silver foils with neutrons and then measuring the decay to find the half-lives of the two main isotopes produced. Much like this.
Note that we were turning a tiny bit of silver into cadmium. So that was worthwhile.
Neutrons are really good for mucking up nuclei since they can so easily get into range unlike protons. But neutron sources are not as easily created and controlled as protons. For those you just ionize some hydrogen and run them thru a magnetic field. Something you can do in your garage. Luckily this means there aren’t a bunch of folk creating radioactive sources in their spare time.
In a nuclear reactor, neutrons collide with atoms and cause them to undergo nuclear decay. In neutron activation, on the other hand, neutrons collide with atoms and cause them to undergo nuclear decay.