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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Half-Life

Half-life is closely related to the property of Radioactive Decay and represents the time taken for half the Atoms in a Radioactive substances to undergo decay and change into another nuclear form (either a radioactive daughter product or a stable form). It is therefore the time taken for the Activity of a radioactive sample to decay by half and is commonly given the symbol t1/2.

Physics is really nothing more than a search for ultimate simplicity, but so far all we have is a kind of elegant messiness

– Bill Bryson -