Americium-241 primarily emits alpha radiation. The 241Am in your smoke detector

Question

Americium-241 primarily emits alpha radiation. The 241Am in your smoke detector is stored in a sealed chamber that is unlikely to break down or corrode over time. The seal can however be broken by the use of force such as using a hammer. In the unlikely event that someone in your vicinity takes a hammer to the smoke detector, how can you protect everyone from radiation?

Fiestaware is radioactive because the glaze used contains uranium oxide. The half-life of the uranium-238 isotope present in these dishes is about 4.5 billion years. This implies that most of the uranium-238 is still in the dishes and very little has decayed to emit ionizing radiation. Uranium-238 initially decays into thorium-234 and an alpha particle as shown in the background, but thorium-234 can further decay to emit beta particles and gamma radiation. What is the decay reaction of thorium-234?

Explanation / Answer

Alpha particles are weak, have low penetration potential to human skin. Hence, they do not require additional protective equipment to be worn while handling them. Note, alpha particles can be stopped by a paper sheet. This is the main reason why Am-241, which primarily emits alpha particles is used in fire detectors. It possesses health risk only if inhaled or ingested.

In a - decay, a neutron inside the nucleus of an atom breaks down and changes into a proton. It emits an electron and an anti-neutrino and the atomic number adds up by one. However, the mass number remains unchanged. Thus in a - decay, 62He converts to 63Li by emitting a - particle and5226Fe converts to 5227Co by emitting a - particle. While the atom remains unchanged with a gamma decay

So the decay reaction for 23490Th is given as:

23490Th ------> 23491Pa + - particle + particle

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