Thread by @CherylRofer

Here's something about radiation that the "Chernobyl" series gets wrong. They are not alone. Pet peeve thread coming up.

Radiation is often considered like a transferable fluid. It is not.

The word "radiation" covers a great deal of ground. Sunshine and heat are both radiation. But I'm going to focus on how the word is used in reference to nuclear reactors and such. 1/

Nuclear radiation comes from the breakdown of atomic nuclei. It comes from matter. It is always associated with matter.

Some types of radiation (alpha) consist of particles (helium nuclei) or electrons (beta). Often energy (gamma) is emitted as well. 2/

You can't have radiation without radioactive matter. When there is an accident, people's skin, hair, and clothes pick up radioactive matter - in the case of Chernobyl, particles spread by smoke or fragmentation in the explosion. 3/

I will stop here to note that I just talked about alpha particles and particles of reactor fuel. "Particles" is another word that causes confusion. 4/

Physicists use the word to talk about veryveryvery tiny pieces of matter, like an alpha particle of two neutrons and two protons. When we talk about radioactive contamination, we are talking about, like, dust particles. Little pieces of radioactive matter. 5/

That is why decontamination is mostly vigorous showering, to get all the radioactive particles off your skin and hair.

Once the particles are gone, so is the radiation. 6/

So that business about the fetus "absorbing" the radiation and saving the mother is nonsense. It belongs with crystals absorbing bad feelings. If the mother ingested (took in by eating or breathing) radioactive particles, some of that could have been transferred to the fetus. 7/

But the placenta protects the fetus, so most of the radioactive material would have stayed in the mother's body. 8/

You can't "catch" radiation, unless someone has radioactive matter on them and rubs it off on you. Or if the particles, like smoke particles, are in the air and you get them on you or breathe them in. 9/

Radiation doesn't exist apart from radioactive matter.

The End.