More than thirty years after the Chernobyl accident: What do we know about the effects of radiation on the...

All radioactive nuclides emit high-energy particles or electromagnetic waves. When this radiation encounters living cells, it can cause heating, break chemical bonds, or ionize molecules. The most serious biological damage results when these radioactive emissions fragment or ionize molecules. For example, α and β particles emitted from nuclear decay reactions possess much higher energies than ordinary chemical bond energies. When these particles strike and penetrate matter, they...

Controlled nuclear fission reactions are used to generate electricity. Any nuclear reactor that produces power via the fission of uranium or plutonium by bombardment with neutrons has six components: nuclear fuel consisting of fissionable material, a nuclear moderator, a neutron source, control rods, reactor coolant, and a shield and containment system.
Nuclear Fuels
Nuclear fuel consists of a fissile isotope, such as uranium-235, which must be present in sufficient quantity to provide a...

The most common types of radioactivity are α decay, β decay, γ decay, neutron emission, and electron capture.
Alpha (α) decay is the emission of an α particle from the nucleus. For example, polonium-210 undergoes α decay:

Mutations are changes in the sequence of DNA. These changes can occur spontaneously or they can be induced by exposure to environmental factors. Mutations can be characterized in a number of different ways: whether and how they alter the amino acid sequence of the protein, whether they occur over a small or large area of DNA, and whether they occur in somatic cells or germline cells.
Chromosomal Alterations Are Large-Scale Mutations
While point mutations are changes in a single nucleotide in...

Overview

Nuclear chemistry is the study of reactions that involve changes in nuclear structure. The nucleus of an atom is composed of protons and, except for hydrogen, neutrons. The number of protons in the nucleus is called the atomic number (Z) of the element, and the sum of the number of protons and the number of neutrons is the mass number (A). Atoms with the same atomic number but different mass numbers are isotopes of the same element.
A nuclide of an element has a specific number of protons and...