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| The article states, "Actinium-227 is extremely radioactive, and in terms of its potential for radiation induced health effects, actinium-227 is about as dangerous as plutonium. Ingesting even small amounts of actinium-227 would represent a serious health hazard." In fact (not accounting for decay products) Ac 227 is 28400year / 21.7year = 1309 times more radioactive than plutonium 239. Also, its decay products are short lived (the longest is 18 days, much less than the 7*10^8 year half life of plutonium 239). Plutonium 239 emits alpha rays, but Ac 227 and decay products emit alpha, beta, and gamma (?) rays. For this reason, actinium 227 is more dangerous (for the same quantity) than plutonium 239. | The article states, "Actinium-227 is extremely radioactive, and in terms of its potential for radiation induced health effects, actinium-227 is about as dangerous as plutonium. Ingesting even small amounts of actinium-227 would represent a serious health hazard." In fact (not accounting for decay products) Ac 227 is 28400year / 21.7year = 1309 times more radioactive than plutonium 239. Also, its decay products are short lived (the longest is 18 days, much less than the 7*10^8 year half life of plutonium 239). Plutonium 239 emits alpha rays, but Ac 227 and decay products emit alpha, beta, and gamma (?) rays. For this reason, actinium 227 is more dangerous (for the same quantity) than plutonium 239. | ||
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Revision as of 22:13, 8 January 2006
Article changed over to new WikiProject Elements format by Mav, Mkweise, and Dwmyers 15:40 Feb 28, 2003 (UTC). Elementbox converted 10:26, 17 July 2005 by Femto (previous revision was that of 07:26, 13 July 2005).
Information Sources
Some of the text in this entry was rewritten from Los Alamos National Laboratory - Actinium. Additional text was taken directly from USGS Actinium Statistics and Information, from the Elements database 20001107 (via [http://www.dict.org dict.org), Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) (via dict.org) and WordNet (r) 1.7 (via dict.org). Data for the table was obtained from the sources listed on the subject page and WikiProject Elements but was reformatted and converted into SI units.
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Hypothetical Application of Actinium
In principle, actinium 227 could be used as a source of thermoelectric power. It has a half life of 21.773 years and emits approximatly 56 J/s per gram of actinium 227 (this calculated energy release takes into account decay produts at equlibrum, assumes no gamma rays, assumes all alpha rays emmited have the same energy, and that all beta rays emitted have the same energy).
Actually, the energy emmitted per gram of actinium in equilibrum can be calculated to be approximatly 10 watts per gram with improved data, but this is still approximate and uncertain.
Toxicity of Actinium 227
The article states, "Actinium-227 is extremely radioactive, and in terms of its potential for radiation induced health effects, actinium-227 is about as dangerous as plutonium. Ingesting even small amounts of actinium-227 would represent a serious health hazard." In fact (not accounting for decay products) Ac 227 is 28400year / 21.7year = 1309 times more radioactive than plutonium 239. Also, its decay products are short lived (the longest is 18 days, much less than the 7*10^8 year half life of plutonium 239). Plutonium 239 emits alpha rays, but Ac 227 and decay products emit alpha, beta, and gamma (?) rays. For this reason, actinium 227 is more dangerous (for the same quantity) than plutonium 239. 01:01, 8 January 2006 (UTC)Polonium