Nuclear technology
The vast majority of common, natural phenomena on Earth only involve gravity and electromagnetism, and not nuclear reactions.
They discovered that radioactive materials produce intense, penetrating rays of three distinct sorts, which they labeled alpha, beta, and gamma after the first three Greek letters.
If there are enough immediate decays to carry on the chain reaction, the mass is said to be prompt critical, and the energy release will grow rapidly and uncontrollably, usually leading to an explosion.
When discovered on the eve of World War II, this insight led multiple countries to begin programs investigating the possibility of constructing an atomic bomb — a weapon which utilized fission reactions to generate far more energy than could be created with chemical explosives.
During the project, the first fission reactors were developed as well, though they were primarily for weapons manufacture and did not generate electricity.
The remaining abundance of heavy elements, from nickel to uranium and beyond, is due to supernova nucleosynthesis, the R-process.
Technical and theoretical difficulties have hindered the development of working civilian fusion technology, though research continues to this day around the world.
Nuclear fusion was initially pursued only in theoretical stages during World War II, when scientists on the Manhattan Project (led by Edward Teller) investigated it as a method to build a bomb.
It also is quite difficult to ensure that such a chain reaction consumes a significant fraction of the fuel before the device flies apart.
The procurement of a nuclear fuel is also more difficult than it might seem, since sufficiently unstable substances for this process do not currently occur naturally on Earth in suitable amounts.
A uranium bomb, Little Boy, was dropped on the Japanese city Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, followed three days later by the plutonium-based Fat Man on Nagasaki.
In the wake of unprecedented devastation and casualties from a single weapon, the Japanese government soon surrendered, ending World War II.
Nevertheless, they prompted an arms race to develop increasingly destructive bombs to provide a nuclear deterrent.
Such a weapon would not have the explosive capability of a fission or fusion bomb, but would kill many people and contaminate a large area.
Throughout the Cold War, the opposing powers had huge nuclear arsenals, sufficient to kill hundreds of millions of people.
Generations of people grew up under the shadow of nuclear devastation, portrayed in films such as Dr. Strangelove and The Atomic Cafe.
A number of radiopharmaceuticals are used, sometimes attached to organic molecules, to act as radioactive tracers or contrast agents in the human body.
X-rays and gamma rays are used in industrial radiography to make images of the inside of solid products, as a means of nondestructive testing and inspection.
Gauges - Gauges use the exponential absorption law of gamma rays Electrostatic control - To avoid the build-up of static electricity in production of paper, plastics, synthetic textiles, etc., a ribbon-shaped source of the alpha emitter 241Am can be placed close to the material at the end of the production line.
The technology involves the use of a neutron or gamma-ray source and a radiation detector which are lowered into boreholes to determine the properties of the surrounding rock such as porosity and lithography.
In biology and agriculture, radiation is used to induce mutations to produce new or improved species, such as in atomic gardening.
Further applications include sprout inhibition, delay of ripening, increase of juice yield, and improvement of re-hydration.
As such it is also used on non-food items, such as medical hardware, plastics, tubes for gas-pipelines, hoses for floor-heating, shrink-foils for food packaging, automobile parts, wires and cables (isolation), tires, and even gemstones.
The genuine effect of processing food by ionizing radiation relates to damages to the DNA, the basic genetic information for life.
The specialty of processing food by ionizing radiation is the fact, that the energy density per atomic transition is very high, it can cleave molecules and induce ionization (hence the name) which cannot be achieved by mere heating.
The treatment of solid food by ionizing radiation can provide an effect similar to heat pasteurization of liquids, such as milk.
[10][11][12] Food irradiation is essentially a non-nuclear technology; it relies on the use of ionizing radiation which may be generated by accelerators for electrons and conversion into bremsstrahlung, but which may use also gamma-rays from nuclear decay.
Two scientists, an American and Canadian respectively, Harry Daghlian and Louis Slotin, died after mishandling the same plutonium mass.
Proponents of nuclear energy note that annually, nuclear-generated electricity reduces 470 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions that would otherwise come from fossil fuels.
[14] Proponents of nuclear energy also bring to attention the opportunity cost of utilizing other forms of electricity.
