this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2025
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How radioactive will it be?
Pfft, you aren't asking the right question, the real question is:
"How much healing power is it enfused with?"
:D
Both ^198^Hg and ^197^Au are perfectly stable isotopes and so according to the paper not at all!
However, my layman's understanding is that the breeder is a form of neutron irradiation, and neutron irradiation of ^197^Au yields ^198^Au which is radioactive and produces ~0.411 MeV of radiation and has a half-life of 2.69 days before decaying back to ^198^Hg.
Compare that with ^235^U. In comparison ^198^Au has no decay chain, ~10x less energy than the highest emitters, a much shorter half life and beta- decay instead of alpha decay.
Coverting to something like sieverts gets real tricky, but the beta decay means it's not very penetrative, ~4mm in biological tissue, and the short half-life means it will quickly stabilize itself. Therefore as long as it's not predominantly ^198^Au it's probably fine.
I would guess (based on very little) that it wouldn't have much radiation at all. This is fusion, not fission
https://euro-fusion.org/faq/does-fusion-give-off-radiation/