Talk:Radionuclide
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This article fail to mention the environmental problems that the disposal of these causes. It is unbalanced.
- I agree. To be complete, there are other negatives that need to be mentioned, such as polution, the diseases and mutations that can be produced by exposure, et cetera. -- April
- This article sounds as though it were taken from a P.R. brochure for the nuclear industry. "saving many lives"? c'mon.
I think a seperate section on the disposal or radioactive materials with a link from radiosiotopes would be better than adding to this entry.
Some balance is needed in the discussion of radioactivity, waste disposal and risk. Most radioisotopes are natural. The medical use of radioactivity does not cause a significant disposal problem. The fear of mutations is not sensible. More radioactive material is released by non-nuclear activity eg. coal burning than nuclear activity. The real concern is of a catastrophic event eg Is it worth mentioning Americium 241 by name in smoke detectors?
Isotopes with half lifes significantly less than the age of the earth are not necessarily rare if they are a decay products of longer lived isotopes.
Is it worth mentioning the different types of radioactive decay that radioactive isotopes can undergo? The entry gives the impression that only gamma radiation is emitted. This is only the case when excited nuclear states decay (eg. Tc99m very important in nuclear medicine).
The article could be more specific about which radioisotopes are used in each application, and how exactly. I don't know much about such matters, but surely many Wikipedians do?
—Herbee 01:53, 2004 Apr 9 (UTC)
If you think this article has a rather peculiar slant on the subject, check out the article on ionizing radiation. Quite curious. --Martschink 13:18, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
[edit] radioisotope / radionuclide
I moved this page and changed the word radioisotope to radionuclide to fix the minor nomenclature oversight. an isotope must be of a specific atom. The statement, 'Which isotope is that?' can only be used when the atom has been established. In contrast, "Which nuclide is that?" can be used when the atom is unknown, i.e. when you find something radioactive and you want to know which radionuclide it is. Pdbailey 17:24, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- Good catch. Andrew 04:33, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Suggestion
Shouldn't most of the uses section be moved out to radioactive tracer? I'm not really qualified to say for sure, or else I would do it myself, but that article is certainly lacking much of what is in here. Also the more general article Isotopic tracer seems to be a bit orphaned too. - Taxman Talk 21:03, August 1, 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Reference needed to refer to in a report
<<When radioactive carbon, for example, is in the atmosphere, it rapidly becomes separated from its decay products. Once it is bound up in a solid, such as wood or paper, its decay products must remain in place. So by measuring how much of these decay products has accumulated, one can estimate the time when the carbon was captured into solid form.>>
Please, can you provide a reference for this statement? 150.135.161.120 00:46, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
