Thorium, Fire Diamonds, Goofy Inventions, and More! - Nuclear Engineer Reacts to Best of Sam O'Nella

[@tfolsenuclear]

By popular demand, here is a Sam O’Nella Compilation Video! Note: I was quite wrong about some of the Thorium info. Uranium does eventually decay into Radon. So does Thorium, but in much lower quantities, and the radon isotope has a much shorter half-life (about a minute compared to about 4 days). Sam is absolutely right that one of the biggest advantages of mining Thorium is you simply don’t have to do it as much since it is more fuel dense. Also, mining Thorium and Uranium is far safer than mining coal, simply because you don’t have to do it nearly as much, as you need 20,000 kg of coal for 1 kg of uranium (and even more coal for 1 kg of thorium with plutonium)

[@unscinfinity3337]

that's what i love about you you admit if you are mistaken. Also congrats on the kid how is he/she?

[@Elongatedmetalpipe]

Your videos are great, and you take fault when you’re mistaken. I accidentally found your channel when I woke up to it playing on auto play, and I binged most of them. You were also a great resource for my high school presentation on nuclear fission. Congrats on almost 100k!

[@Alex2554]

You should play Nucleares. If you get it set up perfectly, you can just sit there doing nothing for a little bit, until something happens.

[@sexylexy22100]

yes i think thorium is the future beacuse millions of tones of it is already mined and treated as a waste product in rare earth mining

[@Logic44]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's where the Radon comes from in the first place lol

[@Danielhuren]

its funny to me how much of the modern era can be chalked up to "then we started putting lead in gasoline"

[@jebediahmothman]

I may be wrong but i think what he was getting at in the thorium video is that uranium will keep fissiling if a meltdown happens but thorium wont

[@fusionwing4208]

a ton of people made comments about this on the original video

[@I_Am_Transcendentem]

That.. face.

[@_Zeezi]

T. Folse be like, "Hey so you know how this guy eats a lot of food? A nuclear reacto-"

[@seanspartan2023]

HR might have an issue with that NFPA Presentation 😂

[@BoraHorzaGobuchul]

"Going nuclear" implies using the nuclear option, i.e. using nukes, not related to the energy sector.

[@Codexionyx101]

6:17 My understanding (and _please_ correct me if I'm wrong,) is that if your reactor is being sustained by fast neutrons, what you're actually probably having is a nuclear meltdown, or at least a _really_ bad day.

[@hummingbirb5403]

Fast reactors were actually developed before the current light water reactors supplying power today! There are a bunch of “levers” you can pull on when making a reactor that influence its safety (size, fuel, moderator, cooling setup, etc.). One way I’ve seen is just reactor geometry and heat. You immerse your fast reactor core in a molten metal coolant (either lead or sodium) and if things start getting hot, the whole vessel expands. More neutrons leak out, and the whole thing stabilizes automatically. The pool of molten metal has a massive temperature range in which it’s stable, letting your core take much higher temperature swings than current reactors do. A big chunk of today’s reactors are under high pressure to operate (pressurized water reactors), and it can make small leaks problematic as they can disperse radioactive material. Liquid metal-cooled fast reactors operate at room pressure, making any sort of leak less problematic. While most fast reactors use uranium and technically generate more nuclear waste, the fast neutron environment acts like an atomic shredder and splits those atoms for power. In this way, you can actually get very little nuclear waste like thorium, as well as using current nuclear waste as fuel! There’s a new initiative for modern reactors called the Gen IV Initiative (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor?wprov=sfti1) and about half of those reactors use fast neutrons. I’d recommend scrolling through those if you wanna learn more about what sorts of reactors are possible, this stuff is cool!

[@ronmaximilian6953]

My eighth grade chemistry teacher told us that safety regulations are written in blood. They exist because of deaths or grievous bodily harm.

[@MarsJenkar]

With the occasional near-miss that is taken sufficiently seriously, though this doesn't happen as often as it probably should.

[@brenboyrobinson3780]

Nice job on 100k soon, I found one of your videos by accident and immediately became fascinated with the idea of nuclear energy. thank you for starting a fascination

[@beansnrice321]

I'm sure others have said this but apparently Radon is a decay product of uranium-238, and that of thorium-232 ore.

[@juliane__]

And decays into Polonium, which is one of the preffered method to assasinate people by the KGB, if they want anybody to know it was an assasination and who did it.

[@fostercathead]

Congrats on the 100K! For me it's your personality, knowledge, and of course your dry sense of humor. Keep it up!

[@unclemikedoyle]

RE: Thorium segment... I'm down for an "all of the above" approach. TBH, the closest I ever came to Nuclear Engineering was when a Navy Recruiter wanted me to sign up and opt for Nuke School (in retrospect, it wouldn't have worked out - I'm not that good at higher math [rueful sigh]...) So, I don't want to go beyond my domain of expertise But, why not do both? Assuming design and prototyping have sufficiently progressed, why not both replace the larger fossil fuel plants with uranium reactors and deploy thorium SMRs as needed to fill in the gaps for the smaller plants. Hell, I'd even be in favor of restarting uranium fuel reprocessing, and, given appropriate management, I'm even open to breeder reactors as we transition away from burning dinosaurs. A sufficiently affirmative reactor program might even overcome the power grid issues that preclude transitioning to EVs for at least local transportation. (Why, yes, I am fond of the old-school science fiction meme of having my very own personal SMR in my garage - why do you ask?) Not likely to happen, I'll admit - too many damned fools out there who go spastic at the first mention of nuclear _anything_, let alone construction of any sort of nuclear power plant. (And let's not forget the sociopaths in politics and entertainment who have built the concept of nuclear power into a boogeyman to scare damned fools and children into giving them votes and/or money, may they burn in Hell for all eternity...) Still, a fellow can dream...

[@TheAdmiralMoses]

1:08:56 Sam: "InB4 obvious footloose refrence" Folse: *proceeds to make a footloose refrence* my brother you played yourself, lmao

[@lunariclunestra8335]

Wow I remember when you just had 1000 subs, I was one of them. And there we are, almost 100k. You done good Mr. Folse. Greetings from Germany c: PS. You are the only channel I have whitelisted on my adblock. You deserve it.

[@spizun]

Early congratulations on 100K! You’ve earned it man

[@josh-gu6zi]

not yet, still only 99.6K

[@spizun]

@@josh-gu6zi yeah that’s why it says *early* congratulations

[@josh-gu6zi]

@@spizun I didn't read it properly

[@Qsie]

Hey there Tyler! Love the videos, they're super entertaining and informative 😄 One note I'd recommend for compilation videos, mentioning at the start (or in the first few words of the title) that it's a compilation, will help prevent people from thinking they've seen a video before. Cheers, and keep on being awesome! ❤

[@kucingmiumiu854]

Tfolse: Uranium is easy to shutdown. Soviet/Russian Nuclear Engineer: hold my beer

[@Kalavani-vz2cz]

Yeah it's kind of their fault for not putting enough money into the safety mechanisms

[@DrewLSsix]

Russian famously screw up many easy things.

[@shepardice3775]

The chernobyl reactor would've never melted down under normal conditions, it was the nature of the test they ran that caused the disaster to happen

[@hauntedshadowslegacy2826]

@@shepardice3775 Yeah, hence the joke. They effed it up so bad, they caused something to happen that was completely avoidable.

[@kolyashinkarev7366]

​@@Kalavani-vz2cztbh, a lot of safety mechanisms were invented AFTER Chernobyl

[@Artemis22202]

Awesome work! Congrats on 100K subscribers! Keep up the great commentary! You review great videos and always make me laugh!😀

[@BoraHorzaGobuchul]

A "spherical horse in vacuum" is a widely used concept here in Mordor.

[@aiaioioi]

mordor xD

[@BoraHorzaGobuchul]

@@aiaioioi not so funny when you're in it

[@felixhex]

Hitler didn't build the Autobahn, that was Brüning. Also, technically, wind and solar could be able to handle the base load - if we invested heavily in storage capacity. We now this because a german energy company actually tried it.

[@Rusty-METAL-J]

Below Species is, Breed for animals and variety for plants. Like:[G, S, B]Felius, Domesticus, Siamese(Siamese House Cat) For variety take for instance apples, after the G & S some of the varieties are, Golden Delicious, Granny Smith, Rose, Crab, Rome, & Law.

[@minisculeyandika]

That Donkey Kong caught me off-guards

[@Zillano]

You walking back immediately after he said domain was added in the 90s LMAO we love mr tyler, we know you aint a oldhead on us xD

[@jonahfalcon1970]

Schmidt actually used descriptions like that for his pain index.

[@5001Fergies]

22:30 i work in aerospace and half of our customers are overseas, so we end up constantly having to convert between metric and imperial because their standard make them use millimeters and ours make us use inches on every document

[@hauntedshadowslegacy2826]

1:50:57 There's a similar 'unit size oopsie' incident in aviation, but with less destruction. The Gimli Glider. They loaded up on waaaaayyyy less fuel than they needed, got halfway through the trip, ran tf outta gas, and the captain had to use his own knowledge from back in his military days to locate a retired runway that hadn't been used since a particular war. It was a Boeing jet, too, so not a little mosquito in the air. Oh, and did I mention that retired runway was being used as a drag strip at the time? So this absolute behemoth of a gigantic metal bird was silently gliding through the sky toward an *occupied* runway with *not-airplanes* everywhere and *no way to warn anybody* because they had *basically no power* and *nobody at the runway had a radio* because *it hadn't been used as a runway in years.* The casualties from the incident? A couple metal barricade fences that were placed along the length of the runway and a few dings and scrapes on the plane itself. Yup. That's it. Nobody died. Wild, eh? Mentour Pilot goes over the details if you wanna know more. If you'd rather hear about other incidents, the Gottröra miracle is a personal favorite alongside Japan Airlines 46E and the Air Astana flight control incident (didn't have a flight number cuz the only passengers were employees who were involved in the incident).

[@beyondwx]

this confirms my theory that parenthood has a consolidating effect

[@mattanderson8737]

Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Training in the military. That’s why they all go together for me.

[@draytonkk]

"im gona distract you with another nuclear measurement" proceeds to leave visual of defective baby to ragu on screen for a minute

[@wallacengineering8096]

I think what would make the most sense for Nuclear power is because Thorium is so much more abundant - use Thorium Plants with Uranium as the Helper/Starter material. Makes perfect sense 🤷‍♂️

[@Mad_Elf_0]

Like the tiny animal planets? You'll love XKCD's "What If I had a mole of moles?"

[@BelgorathTheSorcerer]

I'd like to see you react to some nuclear sketches from Robot Chicken. Especially their Brady Bunch Theme Song and If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. They've got a whole bunch of nuclear related hijinks.

[@ryanehlis426]

That NFPA was really funny 😂

[@JBM113]

47:35 it was 40 ft. Growing up near the site, I could smell it on hot summer days until the early 90s.

[@noxieproxie]

Congratulations on the 100K subscribers! Well deserved!

[@Mr.Dotson]

Been here since 14 Subscribers. Nice to see you getting to 100K soon. Keep up the good work!

[@cactus_cuber1589]

I got here at 3k looks like I’ve got some competition😂

[@deisisase]

Thanks for explaining why the U.S. doesn't recycle the nuclear waste; when I found out that could be done in highschool it seemed like and obvious solution to getting rid of it all.

[@PyroMikeHell]

Not sure if it counts as a flood as it was a gas blanket but had a cryofluid delivery driver spill a notable quantity of fluid and then linger around wondering what to do until they were almost overcome by the vapours.

[@BartdeBoisblanc]

1:10 We have light towers now around Freeway interchanges about as tall but way brighter.

[@michaelmurray2833]

@7:30 I feel like ability to shut down is the highest priority thing to consider. Chernobyl and Fukashima had control rods and "active" shutdown methods too. Starting with a base element that passively shuts itself down and needs input power/reaction to run is intrinsicly much safer. Doesn't matter if things are "safe 99% of the time" when the worst case scenario is so devastating. When failure is that horrible, you should care about improper shutdown, even terrorist action like Russia military taking over the Zaporizhzhia power plant. Just start with reactions that stop intrinsicly. Use Thorium.

[@paulw3182]

These are great - thanks for sharing.

[@MorellioBenoir]

Yay another T. Folse video, he's aweso- 4 hours?! Surely this can't be rea... Wow. Amazing stamina!

[@RedRyan]

A huge congratulations on 100,000 subscribers

[@TrebleWing]

"You guessed it, BEETLES!"

[@johnmcauliffe8824]

That bill cosby lobotomy joke was wild

[@NinaFelwitch]

Sam O'Nella is fantastic!

[@michaelmurray2833]

@1:32:34 Actually when the atomic age came about they did use focussed radiation on plants to induce genetic differences in DNA to get a faster process vs naturally occuring random mutations from breeding. and then artificial selection from there. Kind of an in between GMO stage of human selecting natural best crops, and humans knowing which gene's to modify to produce better crops.

[@blahorgaslisk7763]

I learned about nuclear reactors in school some time in the very late 70's or the first years of the 80's. I remember we were taught about the different types, control methods, panic stopping a reactor and handling of radioactive materials and storage of used fuel. I can't remember we were taught about liquid salt reactors, but most of the others I can remember. Now one reactor we were told about but at the time I don't think they were common or even really used yet was breeder reactors. Now as I remember the French were very interested in these as they would make enriching Uranium a lot cheaper, I think. As I said this was more than 40 years back so my memory is a bit unreliable. Now it's been a fair few years since I heard anything about these. Were they not reliable, effective, or dangerous, or was there any other reason we don't hear about them any more? I think they could be used to produce weapon grade plutonium, which is seen as a dangerous thing, so I could see that as a reason not to use them.

[@BartdeBoisblanc]

1:15 Nuclear power splitting atoms with Thor hammers. Hammer Time.

[@windhelmguard5295]

i'd say 5 is just chlorine triflouride

[@caffienatedtactician]

5 in all categories?

[@dellseasandoval8187]

This was absolutely hilarious.

[@YeezusGhoul]

Nuclear should 100% be the main power generation. People get worried about war stuff, but if both sides have nuclear reactors, both sides would lose. And ofc the uninformed are against it. Though "going nuclear" I think more have to do with the extreme energy being harnessed and the uses history have shown. We're talking about nuclear as a whole, which is an extreme energysource we've learned to control. 40:00~ for context

[@jimbstars]

49:00 it was not mentioned here that the molasses was at a warmed temperature during pumping from the ship it came in on. That must have really sucked to get stuck in it and maybe burned too.

[@Draconicfish2679]

31:16 I’ve heard you talking about shakes in a different video, but never anywhere else.

[@refoliation]

I wonder if yellow means ‘chem reactive’ because of the Great War and mustard (chlorine) gas being yellow.

[@nikolthomas2544]

In adition to the buffalo sentence, there's a chinese poem, only made of the word 'shi' , pronounced with different tones, 92 or 94 times, since there's more than one version.

[@dx243_]

33:04 *T. Folse slowly starts dying of asphyxiation*

[@pazsion]

i believe radon is a direct daughter particle of uranium decay? thorium methods currently is sustained 10,000 degrees and more so it breeds materials through transmutation. uranium and plutonium are highly energetic together.

[@cliptracer8980]

The moment they add sound wave confinement for the neutrons in reactors they’ll stop losing mass, breaking down, and start being reliable long term. As electromagnetic fields can’t hold and neutrons. It’s half the key to sustaining fusion.

[@jimbstars]

18:00 The green stuff predates Simpson’s and came from The Toxic Avenger movie.. dunno if it was supposed to be radioactive in the movie or just Toxic…. But def a 4…

[@akuyume7]

3:01:02 Have you heard of Project Sundial? Would be interesting to hear your thoughts on the topic. The idea was to build a massive nuclear weapon so large it could be stationary and used to cause global chaos.

[@TheBlibo]

Hi from the uk Sam o neller yes I will be making the recommendations to our h&s dept

[@patrickmorrissey2271]

Nice! @ 21:03 I agree 100%... I hope your safety manager agrees to let that be played.... I suppose you'd have to have an agreement with Sam O'Nella, to use that with permission, but it'd be worth it... Very good explanation.... Maybe it's hard to say, if you already know how to read those.... but I feel like his "UR Good" to "dam son" sliding scale.... Is very good. If you had no idea what you were looking at, and you could remember the sliding scale??? That would help you a lot.... I am not in in nuclear, but if you hang around in industry, maybe a paint & coatings factory, or an aerosol mfg company, you'll see those labels everywhere.... Everything is flammable of course, so you see red 3 on a lotta stuff.... health though, that could be from 1 to 3... And you don't necessarily need to know "everything" to see that Acetone is health 1, and something like MEK is health 2... Good to know that "hey, this is worse...." The mixtape thing cracked me up.... 050... So basically, it's so flammable, it will spontaneously combust outside on a winter day, But health is zero, it won't hurt you in any way.... Heh heh heh!!!!

[@4everlearnin]

I wonder if a blend of the two would be a way to produce more reusable products

[@jmr2008jan]

in regards to the unusual units of measurement section, there's a unofficial unit of measurement known as the "Dominos index." How busy a Dominos within a short distance of The Pentagon is directly correlates to how much fecal matter is currently making kinetic impact with a fan blade.

[@BartdeBoisblanc]

40:30 The beatle was given a name that may cause it to go extict. This is irony

[@Arides2010]

The part at the end about religious symbols reminded me of a german comedian saying: „What if there was a crucifix shortage and they had to tack him to the temple wall, would catholic priests carry a literal brick around their necks?“ And then he continued by pointing out how swearing especially in southern Germany would be influenced by this fact.

[@dmaifred]

That doodle has to be nile red with the chemicals

[@mrwolfe0812]

I would totally accept a job working in a nuclear power plant. Assuming that I could ever score an offer.

[@elliottandersson3157]

41:10 then i propose we start using "I'm going above one dollar!"

[@ivoryowl]

Those historical mass psychogenic illnesses make me think that maybe their water or food sources were contaminated somehow. Imagine their wells had some kind of bacteria or fungus, or maybe the wheat used to make their bread and beer had ergot. EDIT: The video actually mentioned it! lol

[@timothystamm3200]

A five for flammability would probably be something like Chlorine Trifluoride. It ignites on contact with almost anythinf flammable, and it boils in contact with atmosphere. It can only be safely held in steel bottles because it burns a small layer of the steel and it can't burn things it's already burned. Also, it's better at fluorinating than Fluorine. And betternat oxidizing than oxygen. It's apparently used in semiconductor manufacturers to clean their equipment. For stability, it would probably be something like Azide Azidoazide, I think I spelled that correctly. Essentially that's an almost completely Nitrogen based chemical with no triple bonds in it. Nitrogen is highly unstable without a triple bond. Can you guess what it will do with out prompting or with very little prompting? It explodes.

[@PBeringer]

Could you please consider doing a reaction video to the MSRE - Molten Salt Reactor Experiment video from Oak Ridge NL? Would love to get your thoughts on liquid fuel reactors, and particularly the thorium fuel cycle. Though, it doesn't get covered in that film, as the experiment was shut down before a thorium cycle could be tried. It did go critical on U-233, however ...

[@aidenzerkle8672]

first off downtimes for thorium reactors could be as little as thirty minutes to 5 hours instead of the multi day refueling process for regular reactors (just drain the spent stuff and pour in the new stuff) ofcourse saftey is still an issue however if you just drain into the containment units for the event of a runaway you can get the fuel out in at most five minutes and once you have that done just divert to secondary tanks also because it is a molten salt reactor molten being the key word once it is drained you can just let it cool for like 3 ish hours depending on how you cool it and once that is done you can just ship it in the nearly unbreakable transport containers they have for this stuff straight back to the place that made it to recycle it this entire process would most likley take less than a month to get the new stuff in change the reactor fuel in one day and ship the spent stuff out again AND you could even do all of this within a single work shift and have at least one done before lunch i am just going by what i in my limited knowledge think could happen but seeing as the fuel itself does not like to be super spicy it seems reasonable to assume that all this could be done in about a month even with a multi day cooling period for the spent fuel AND i also dont think the fuel has to be kept in a pool untill you are ready to use it again

[@AmaroqStarwind]

You should cover XKCD Relativistic Baseball. (Though I think it'd be even more entertaining if you read the original article!)

[@caffienatedtactician]

Lmao, I just watched your playlist of these last week!

[@jonahfalcon1970]

The dancing epidemic was likely ergotism.

[@BartdeBoisblanc]

2:53 HA HA it's Wild Kingdom Konmari !

[@itsmikebauer]

Hey man I watch your videos all the time there fucking amazing I learn something new every time I watch hey I thought of something that might make a good short on KZbin for you in the first scene in the first back to the future there’s a story about plutonium going missing and then they pan over to it in a case in docs lab ,u could be like this is or isn’t how they would store this material idk saw it thought of you now I’m rambling hope you have a great day keep up the great work

[@dunbreezy5052]

Doesn’t uranium decay into radon eventually? Could the gas be caused by parts being in different levels of the decay chain?

[@sk3tchimdg3t33]

Im actually pro thorium buy at the same time i understand that we would need more breeding reactors to create plutonium for the “spark plug” but that minuscule compared to the amount of waste we’re creating right now

[@AlchemysAngel]

Nfpa704 sounds like an SCP

[@rangerrick5660]

Thank god we have a professional opinion on sam

[@praire3530]

Have you ever read Plutonian Ode by Allen Ginsberg? Not directly related to nuclear energy but neighbour is this.

[@bettya.k.abetty8259]

If the power grid was completely dependent on nuclear Id be so happy

[@AdiktdToLoli]

But how would they fund and start wars if they cant exploit the peoples need for oil and gas

[@Necronlord54]

On the submarine I was on, we had critical which was that we were producing the same amount of power we were consuming, super critical we were producing more power than we were using and uncontrollable super critical which was a problem. I was a radioman, so I really only know what they announced.

[@Garmr2000]

More long videos. Sweet.

[@Crowzival]

Note: “going nuclear” refers to the kind of weapon. That is why it should definitely keep its meaning.

[@michaelmurray2833]

@53:25 A thorium reactor with salt freeze plug would actually put itself into a safe state with total loss of power. So why not switch to a reactor that just goes safe when you lose all power. instead of saying 'oh look we added more backup power to our backup power to cover even more unforseen problems.' Just don't start with a runaway reaction system like uranium fuel pellets and active cooling.

[@icychill105]

"Kendrick lamar is gonna date this video" And then he came back with a diss track to be relevant again

[@michaelmurray2833]

The thorium segment didn't go into molten liquid salt reactors and how liquid fuel is so much more efficient than solid fuel that cracks and needs robotic arms to "stoke the fire" and move fuel rods around.

[@ericmcdonald9803]

Boston Molassacre... lmao

[@limabravo6065]

The suns not orange or green, we see it as yellow primarily because of its light having to go through the atmosphere before hitting our retinas. Up above the atmosphere it appears white but it was classed as a yellow dwarf before anyone ever went up to space. It's kind of like planetary nebula having nothing to do with planets, rather they're super nova remnants. But they were named before we'd seen or even knew of super nova at all and for whatever reason the astronomy community won't just rename them

[@luciusoso]

Livestream from a nuclear plant to celebrate 100k?🤪

[@farmlife4533]

I rather geothermal energy but I think all energy sources need to be used in perfect harmony for the best results including nuclear, geothermal, wind and solar and many others I can’t think of right off the top of my head

[@farmlife4533]

I rather geothermal because I find it the most interesting

[@benjamies4136]

The problem I wish most nuclear physicist could understand us that these ready understandings are what help the rest of us trust you. Your explanations make us trust nuclear energy less, not more. Sam is putting this just understanding enough and then.... no one knows what a nuclear facility outside of the Simpsons looks like. How safe are they? We don't know

[@failurenotsorry6600]

Except his whole thing is correcting misinformation, his explanations are truthful and in-depth because he knows what he's talking about and he wants to spread knowledge. In short, you're the only one with that issue.

[@catring_]

Who's "us"?

[@jonahfalcon1970]

Triso balls are the future.

[@marksmadhousemetaphysicalm2938]

How many U.S. reactors are actually designed with passive safety? Most of our reactors are really old technology

[@michaelmurray2833]

@1:34:58 Could you explain how hitting specifically metals with enough radiation does turn them radioactive where other radiations is just steralizing? Also side note. how do you feel about using radiation in Carbon Sequestration to kill fungus that would turn wood back into CO2 via rot. The whole reason we can't make more coal is because trees rot now instead of just getting buried. can we fill abandoned pit mines with trees and a small nuclear radiating source and a dirt layer and call it permanenet carbon capture?

[@jameson1239]

Not a nuclear physicist but I’ll try my best. Radiation just means any energy that is emitted by something so there are different types of radiation the main types are thermal radiation or heat, electromagnetic waves, and high energy particles the high energy particles are what are used to make things radioactive they basically work by shooting a subatomic particle usually a neutron into a larger atoms nucleus to make it unstable you can do this to sterilize stuff to it’s just a lot more expensive and means you can’t really handle the material afterwards, the kind of radiation normally used to normally sterilize things is ultraviolet radiation or UV light which works by using a photon to excite an atoms electrons and cause them to fly off making them far more reactive which essentially breaks the microbe apart its also why you get a sunburn it’s actually kind of cool each electron orbital has a specific excitation wavelength you have to exceed for the electron to be excited which in turn emit a photon at a unique wavelength called spectra meaning you can determine what element something is by measuring what wavelengths are emitted when you shoot an electromagnetic wave at it

[@Mag3.1415]

This dude is sponsored by nuclear power at this point.