Radiation Protection Glossary

A radiation protection glossary for Radiation Protection Supervisors (RPS), Radiation Protection Advisers (RPA) and anyone else interesting in radiation safety terms and definitions. The glossary is a mixture of health physics , phrases related to radiation protection legislation, transport, practical safety, technical terms and similar.

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Activity

Published: Oct 12, 2018

In effect means:- 'how much Radioactive material' - in terms of rate of transformations where 1 Becquerel (Bq) =1 transformation per second. Therefore, for 1MBq of activity the disintegration rate will be 1,000,000 transformations per second. The non-SI unit of activity is the Curie (Ci) where 1Ci = 37 GBq (i.e. 37,000,000,000 transformations per second). Note that the rate does not represent the number of particles emitted per second - take Cobalt-60 (Co-60) for example, each decay produces two gamma ray photons per disintegration.

Atoms are very special: they like certain particular partners, certain particular directions, and so on. It is the job of physics to analyze why each one wants what it wants.

– Richard P. Feynman -