"Ghostrecon" wrote in message
.. .
On Mon, 28 Mar 2011 22:23:07 +0000, Tim Streater wrote:

In article ,
"dennis@home" wrote:

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
dennis@home wrote:


"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
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Not ere they don't. Waste is after all, relatively small. I mean we
don't INCREASE the total radioactivity of the earth do we? just help
natures 'natural uranium 235 decay' along a bit faster.

Decay is not the same as fission.

Yes it is.


Oh no it isn't.

It is in the general sense that an atom of one element is transmuted to
another element. It's true that with decay you get just the one daughter
product whereas with fission you get two or more.

For example.. AFAIK fission leads to isotopes that can decay by beta
emission while decay doesn't.
fission products don't emit alpha radiation so you can't put them in a
cardboard box to stop the radiation like you can with unused fuel rods.

It'll take me a while to see if this looks like being true. I don't see
why a fission product, if it's a radioactive isotope, is forbidden from
undergoing alpha decay.

I dont think its forbidden its just that daughter nuclei have a larger
number of neutrons compared to protons (n/p ratio) than is stable so they
tend to decay by multiple beta emmisions (n-p+e+v) which reduces the
ratio

I was looking at some decay chains and didn't spot any fission products that
decayed by alpha.
It must be statistically possible but it could be so rare that it doesn't
happen.

The other thing I noticed was the half life of fission products is either
very short (less than a few decades) or very long (millennia) nothing in
between.