Enriched uranium can be in the form of small pellets that are packaged in the long tubes used in nuclear reactors. Because uranium decays by alpha particles, external exposure to uranium is not as dangerous as exposure to other radioactive elements because the skin will block the alpha particles. Ingestion of high concentrations of uranium, however, can cause severe health effects, such as cancer of the bone or liver.
Inhaling large concentrations of uranium can cause lung cancer from the exposure to alpha particles. Uranium is also a toxic chemical, meaning that ingestion of uranium can cause kidney damage from its chemical properties much sooner than its radioactive properties would cause cancers of the bone or liver. Skip directly to site content Skip directly to page options Skip directly to A-Z link.
Radiation Emergencies. Section Navigation. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Syndicate. Radioisotope Brief: Uranium. Minus Related Pages. Where does it come from? What form is it in? What does it look like? When it has been refined and enriched, uranium is a silvery-white metal. How can it hurt me? Further, if you look in the decay chain, you will notice quite a few elements appearing, some of which radon are gases which you can neither smell nor see but nevertheless inhale and absorb.
Therefore, from a biological point of view, the answer must be: " very ". You can certainly handle uranium safely with simple rubber gloves and behind a suction or wearing a breath mask , but otherwise playing with it is not such a terribly good idea. All uranium nuclides are radioactive. Thus, also natural uranium is radioactive; it mainly consists of the nuclides U and U and also contains U in radioactive equilibrium with U During the chemical purification of the uranium sample, the various daughter nuclides are removed.
Due to radioactive decay of uranium, however, new daughter nuclides of the uranium nuclides are generated. Therefore, most of the external exposure caused by natural uranium is due to daughter nuclides and not due to the uranium nuclides themselves.
Because of the high density of uranium, most of the radiation emitted by the uranium sample is absorbed by the material itself. Therefore, the dose rate for a real sample is significantly lower than the dose rate for a point source. This effect is called self-absorption. Due to self-absorption, the dose rate is much lower when looking from the top or bottom compared to the sides.
Compared to the dose from external exposure, the dose from internal exposure caused by the intake of radioactive material can be more important since the distances of the relevant tissues to the source are obviously much shorter and self-absorption by the radioactive material is not relevant. Especially alpha radiation can be very important for internal exposure although it is not relevant for external exposure at all. Therefore, when working with uranium, contamination can be a more important problem than external exposure.
The committed effective dose from ingestion of uranium dioxide is still relatively low. The main reason is the low uptake of relatively insoluble uranium compounds from the gastrointestinal tract to the blood. Different results are obtained for inhalation, when such insoluble uranium compounds are deposited in the lungs.
This value corresponds to the annual dose limit for radiation workers. Therefore, the most important problem when working with uranium or similar relatively insoluble alpha emitters is inhalation of airborne contamination. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group.
Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. How radioactive is uranium? Ask Question. Asked 5 years, 3 months ago. Active 1 year, 8 months ago. Viewed 8k times. Improve this question. John John 6 6 silver badges 15 15 bronze badges. The numerous ores it's found in or pure uranium?
If the latter, then which isotope? Rule of thumb 2: Do not take any chances with ingesting or inhaling the smoke or dust of alpha emittersnot even one that is as weakly radioactive as Uranium.
Would you eat a banana? Sleep next to someone? What if I told you that your very body is composed of radioactive elements? They're perfectly safe , of course. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Alexander Cska Alexander Cska 1, 11 11 silver badges 17 17 bronze badges. I'm not doubting your answer - it's just that you seem to imply that a lump of uranium under your seat all the time would not irradiate you to a 20mSv a year extent.
Is this what you mean to say? Also, even with mildly radioactive metals there is a risk of ingesting shards as well as the chemical toxicity which you mention and even low level emitters lingering inside the body are a problem. The decay chain is all alphas and betas, so the seat material, alone, is enough to shield it. What the gamma and neutron spectrum of a chunk of material looks like is a very different matter, though, for that you need to know where it came from and what else but Uranium and the decay products are in there.
There is no way to know that without an analysis. It is still at about background level. Show 13 more comments.
The main risks you have when handling something like a pellet of U is: It can be ingested. Uranium is one of the more dangerous here, because it easily produces shavings that can move in the air and burn quite easily.
U decay mostly emits alpha radiation which is relatively harmless to humans, as long as you keep it outside. Needless to say, it becomes a lot more of a problem when it sticks to your lungs and gets into your blood though that already poses extra problems due to it being a heavy metal - it's highly toxic regardless of its radioactivity. It's very concentrated - you're holding a big slab of radioactive material. The potassium in a banana is highly radioactive, but there's so little of it that it doesn't pose a real hazard.
Luaan Luaan 5, 20 20 silver badges 29 29 bronze badges. CuriousOne CuriousOne Damon Damon 1 1 silver badge 6 6 bronze badges. I didn't know about the "masquerading as calcium" bit. That's truly scary. There is, of course, a real possibility that the OP wanted to know the answer to the former and asked the latter because they didn't understand the distinction.
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