Nuclear Reactor Radiation

[Eurox]

I watched a programme about nuclear reactor waste and apparentyl if you where to stand in the part of the reactor that is classed as HIGH radiation, or whatever its called, where all the waste is, its protected by left 5 feet of lead glass and concrete, you would only last about 5 seconds. But how come? what would the radiation do to you body in such a short time, would you be able to see the effects? cheers!

[Loosehead]

It's not "where all the waste is" but anyway if you where to stand there, the gamma radiation would penetrate your body billions of times very quickly and reduce you to a pile of mostly water in seconds. Imagine 1 billion people shooting at you with tiny machine guns.

[jake-the-peg]

Not to mention the intense neutron flux!

Loosehead's analogy's pretty good - it'd basically kill every cell in your body in pretty short order.

What is really impressive is that there are some bacteria that seem able to survive and even flourish there