Radioactivity severity

When a meteorite falls onto the Earth s surface, it becomes for the most part shielded from the effects of cosmic rays. The cosmic-ray-produced nuclides cease to form so the exposure clock stops. However, because many of the cosmic-ray produced nuclides are radioactive, several new clocks start that can be used to estimate the time that a meteorite has been on the Earth s surface. 

While reading about the discovery of radioactivity, several questions may have occurred to you. Which atomic nuclei are radioactive What types of radiation do radioactive nuclei emit It is best to start with the second question first, and explore the types of radiation emitted by radioactive sources. 

Tritium has, despite its radioactivity, several features in common to Both nuclei have spin-5 and natural abundance levels that are very low, exceedingly so in the case of H. The latter also has a much higher sensitivity to NMR detection than Over the last 20 years, NMR spectroscopy of solids has been developed into a very powerful technique [4] with applications covering a wide span of interests. Therefore, the possibility exists of developing NMR spectroscopy of solids in an analogous manner, providing the even more demanding safety requirements can be met. 

Bottom hole assemblies and certain types of downhole equipment (e.g. logging tools, MWD tools) cost several US 100,000. Some logging tools will have radioactive sources which may need to be recovered or isolated for safety and legal reasons. However, prior to commencing fishing operations, a cost - benefit assessment will have to be made to establish that the time and equipment attributable to the fishing job is justified by the value of the fish or the cost of sidetracking the hole. 

These systems have been operated in extremely low quality (and radioactivity contaminated) industrial environments for the past several years without any major equipment or component failures. Utilizing specialized operating/warm-up procedures, they have operated in low grade, out-of-doors, dust ridden, rain-soaked, industrial environments at temperature ranges which greatly exceed the original equipment manufacturers (OEM) specified limits. The systems have been successfully operated at ambient temperatures of minus 10 to plus 103 degrees Fahrenheit without any pre-mature or un-anticipated equipment failures. 

Although similar to chemical kinetic methods of analysis, radiochemical methods are best classified as nuclear kinetic methods. In this section we review the kinetics of radioactive decay and examine several quantitative and characterization applications. 

Selectivity rarely is of concern with radiochemical methods because most samples contain only a single radioactive isotope. When several radioactive isotopes are present, differences in the energies of their respective radioactive particles can be used to determine each isotope s activity. 

Table 13.1 provides a list of several isotopes commonly used as tracers. The half-lives for these isotopes also are listed. What is the rate constant for the radioactive decay of each isotope ... 

Liquid metals, however, present several disadvantages. Their weights must be considered with regard to equipment design. Additionally, Hquid metals are difficult to contain and special pumps must be used for system safety. Alkali metals react violentiy with water and bum ia air. Liquid metals also may become radioactive whea used for cooling auclear reactors (qv). 

Radon is the heaviest of the hehum-group elements and the heaviest of the normal gaseous elements. It is strongly radioactive. The most common isotope, Rn, has a half-life of 3.825 days (49). Radon s scarcity and radioactivity have severely limited the examination of its physical properties, and the values given ki Table 3 are much more uncertain than are the values Hsted for the other elements. 

Several modes of waste management are available. The simplest is to dilute and disperse. This practice is adequate for the release of small amounts of radioactive material to the atmosphere or to a large body of water. Noble gases and slightly contaminated water from reactor operation are eligible for such treatment. A second technique is to hold the material for decay. This is appHcable to radionucHdes of short half-life such as the medical isotope technetium-9 9m = 6 h), the concentration of which becomes negligible in a week s holding period. The third and most common approach to waste... 

Analyses and experimental results used to assess the consequences of a severe potential accident have resulted in substantially reduced estimates of severe accident consequences. Comparing estimates made by the U.S. Atomic Energy Agency (27) in 1977 with those reported by the U.S. NRC (18,28) in 1990 shows that improved knowledge and plant modifications have reduced the cote damage frequency by a factor of 3—15, depending on reactor type. Additionally, the fractions of radioactive species that would be released are lower by a factor of 10—100,000, depending on the radioactive species. 

It is possible to achieve an excellent measure of the quantity of radioactivity upon disintegration of several hundred thousand atoms, ie,... 

The modem ionization chamber, called a dose caUbrator in this appHcation, is capable of linear measurements of radioactivity having a precision in the range of several percent coefficient of variation over a range of 370 kBq (10 -lCi) to at least 370 GBq (10 Ci). This extraordinary range is the chief advantage of this instmment. It may only be used when the sample is known to have only a single isotope. It has no capacity to distinguish radiation from different isotopes. 

Although performance varies with the isotopes for which they are intended, and with the balance in the design between resolution and efficiency, the overall sensitivity of a y-camera collimator is on the order of 5000 counts/(MBqmin) (several hundred counts/(/iCi-min)). In terms of photons detected per photon emitted, this is equivalent to about 2 x lO ". In other words, about two photons out of 10,000 emitted arrives at the crystal. This necessitates exposure times that range from several minutes to the better part of an hour. Fortunately, the large number of photons available from a modest injected radioactive dose more than offsets the poor detector sensitivity. The camera s abiUty to resolve small objects, however, is ultimately limited by the collimator inefficiency. 

Silicon [7440-21-3] Si, from the Latin silex, silicis for flint, is the fourteenth element of the Periodic Table, has atomic wt 28.083, and a room temperature density of 2.3 gm /cm. SiUcon is britde, has a gray, metallic luster, and melts at 1412°C. In 1787 Lavoisier suggested that siUca (qv), of which flint is one form, was the oxide of an unknown element. Gay-Lussac and Thenard apparently produced elemental siUcon in 1811 by reducing siUcon tetrafluoride with potassium but did not recognize it as an element. In 1817 BerzeHus reported evidence of siUcon occurring as a precipitate in cast iron. Elemental siUcon does not occur in nature. As a constituent of various minerals, eg, siUca and siUcates such as the feldspars and kaolins, however, siUcon comprises about 28% of the earth s cmst. There are three stable isotopes that occur naturally and several that can be prepared artificially and are radioactive (Table 1) (1). 

Technetium-99m coordination compounds are used very widely as noniavasive imaging tools (35) (see Imaging technology Radioactive tracers). Different coordination species concentrate ia different organs. Several of the [Tc O(chelate)2] types have been used. In fact, the large majority of nuclear medicine scans ia the United States are of technetium-99m complexes. Moreover, chiral transition-metal complexes have been used to probe nucleic acid stmcture (see Nucleic acids). For example, the two chiral isomers of tris(1,10-phenanthroline)mthenium (IT) [24162-09-2] (14) iateract differentiy with DNA. These compounds are enantioselective and provide an addition tool for DNA stmctural iaterpretation (36). 

Mass Spectrometer. The mass spectrometer is the principal analytical tool of direct process control for the estimation of tritium. Gas samples are taken from several process points and analy2ed rapidly and continually to ensure proper operation of the system. Mass spectrometry is particularly useful in the detection of diatomic hydrogen species such as HD, HT, and DT. Mass spectrometric detection of helium-3 formed by radioactive decay of tritium is still another way to detect low levels of tritium (65). Accelerator mass spectroscopy (ams) has also been used for the detection of tritium and carbon-14 at extremely low levels. The principal appHcation of ams as of this writing has been in archeology and the geosciences, but this technique is expected to faciUtate the use of tritium in biomedical research, various clinical appHcations, and in environmental investigations (66). 

In the structure sections, labelled compounds have often been used to solve a spectroscopic problem involved in microwave (Section 4.04.1.3.2), nitrogen NMR (Section 4.04.1.3.5), IR (Section 4.04.1.3.7(i)) or mass spectrometry (Section 4.04.1.3.8). The synthesis usually involves non-radioactive compounds ( H, N) by classical methods that must be repeated several times in order to obtain good yields. 

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