In News
- Recently an eight-millimetre capsule has been recovered in Western Australia which was lost earlier.
- It contained radioactive Caesium-137 which was released during the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear disasters.
About Caesium
- Caesium is a soft, flexible, silvery-white metal that can easily form bonds with chlorides to create a crystalline powder.
- There is only one stable form of cesium naturally present in the environment, 133Cs (read as cesium one-thirty-three).
- Nuclear explosions or the breakdown of uranium in fuel elements can produce two radioactive forms of cesium, 134Cs and 137Cs. Both isotopes decay into non-radioactive elements.
- Caesium-137 is the most common radioactive form of caesium which produces beta and gamma radiation, both of which are harmful to humans.
Health and Environment Concers
- Health
- Caesium-137 can cause serious illness when touched, leading to burns and acute radiation sickness.
- External exposure of Caesium-137 can increase the risk of cancer because of the presence of high-energy gamma radiation. Prolonged exposure can even cause death.
- Internal exposure to it through ingestion or inhalation allows the radioactive material to be distributed in the soft tissues, especially muscle tissue.
- Environment
- Cesium in air can travel long distances before settling to the ground or water. Most cesium compounds dissolve in water.
- Cesium binds strongly to moist soils and does not travel far below the surface of the soil, most cesium compounds are very soluble.
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Radioactivity Radioactivity is the phenomenon of the spontaneous disintegration of unstable atomic nuclei to atomic nuclei to form more energetically stable atomic nuclei. Radioactive decay is a highly exoergic, statistically random, first-order process that occurs with a small amount of mass being converted to energy. |
Source: IE
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