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Why is radioactive half-life important?
I can think of three reasons why half-life is important.
A knowledge of radioactive half-life is important because
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It enables the dating of artifacts.
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It allows us to calculate how long we must store radioactive waste until they become safe.
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It enables doctors to use safe radioactive tracers.
Half-life is the time it takes for one-half of the atoms of a radioactive material to disintegrate.
Scientists can use the half-life of carbon-14 to determine the approximate age of organic objects. They determine how much of the carbon-14 has transformed. They can then calculate the age of a substance.
All nuclear reactors produce radioactive waste. The waste must be stored until it is safe for disposal.
The rule is that a sample is safe after 10 half-lives. Thus, we can dispose of waste containing iodine-131 (##t_½## = 8 days) after 80 days.
We must store the plutonium-239 in spent nuclear fuel (##t_½## = 24 000 years) for almost a quarter of a million years.
Doctors use radioactive as medical tracers.
The nuclei must be active long enough to treat the condition, but they must also have a short enough half-life so that they don’t have time to injure healthy cells and organs.
