• Question: when a power plant explodes, how come the radiation can harm the human body for years/generations and how does it ?

    Asked by mazg13 to Bob, Katie, Nisha, Sallie on 6 Jul 2012.
    • Photo: Sallie Baxendale

      Sallie Baxendale answered on 6 Jul 2012:

      Hi Mazg13 – good to hear from you again.
      I hope you’ve enjoyed I’m a Scientist – us scientists really enjoyed the live chats with the schools.
      Radiation from a nuclear explosion takes a very long time to die away – (its to do with the half life of the isotopes) When the human body is exposed to radiation we dont feel it (unless the levels are really really high) but the radiation damages our cells, these cells then go on to cause cancer over time.
      One of the worst nuclear accidents to date was the Chernobyl disaster which occurred in 1986 in Ukraine. That accident only killed 56 people at the time but scientists think that that there will eventually be up to 4,000 additional people who die of cancer because they were exposed to significant radiation levels afterwards.

      Its the final today – Dont forget to vote to me help raise awareness of epilepsy in schools – look at my profile to find out more – there’s a chance for you to win £100.

    • Photo: Bob Bonwick

      Bob Bonwick answered on 6 Jul 2012:

      This is a good question! Radiation sticks, as sallie says ‘half-life’, due to it’s nature. The isotopes are decaying and some do it very fast, like the ones used in theraputicmedicine (tecnicium99), others take hundreds of years. Radiation of all forms can harm the body, the type you think of from nuclear fall out damages us in a silent fasion and can go unnoticed for a long time. The ones we don’t think about, like the radiation from the Sun we all get on a daily basis (not as much on a day like this) takes longer to affect us as it’s much lower in is dose.

      In the future we may be better at blocking radiation of other forms that can do us a lot of harm much faster, and this will help to make power plants safer in the future too.

Comments