Discuss about the hazards associated with radioactive fallout
Answers
Answer:
Nuclear explosions produce air-blast effects similar to those produced by conventional explosives. The shock wave can directly injure humans by rupturing eardrums or lungs or by hurling people at high speed, but most casualties occur because of collapsing structures and flying debris. Thermal radiation.
Answer:
Human and Environmental Effects
EFFECTS ON HUMANS
The health effects of nuclear explosions are due primarily to air blast, thermal radiation, initial nuclear radiation, and residual nuclear radiation or fallout.
Blast. Nuclear explosions produce air-blast effects similar to those produced by conventional explosives. The shock wave can directly injure humans by rupturing eardrums or lungs or by hurling people at high speed, but most casualties occur because of collapsing structures and flying debris.
Thermal radiation. Unlike conventional explosions, a single nuclear explosion can generate an intense pulse of thermal radiation that can start fires and burn skin over large areas. In some cases, the fires ignited by the explosion can coalesce into a firestorm, preventing the escape of survivors. Though difficult to predict accurately, it is expected that thermal effects from a nuclear explosion would be the cause of significant casualties.
Initial radiation. Nuclear detonations release large amounts of neutron and gamma radiation. Relative to other effects, initial radiation is an important cause of casualties only for low-yield explosions (less than 10 kilotons).
Fallout. When a nuclear detonation occurs close to the ground surface, soil mixes with the highly radioactive fission products from the weapon. The debris is carried by the wind and falls back to Earth over a period of minutes to hours.
The first three of these effects are “prompt” effects, because the harm is inflicted immediately after the detonation. By contrast, the radiation dose from fallout is delivered over an extended period, as described in Chapter 5. Most of the dose from fallout is due to external exposure to gamma radiation from radionuclides deposited on the ground, and this is the only exposure pathway considered by the computer models that the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) used to estimate health effects for this study. Below is a discussion of the possible