Talk:Radiation/@comment-1978473-20190406144122

This is your daily reminder that for the type of radiation that comes from nuclear fuel, it only takes a span of water 7cm thick to cut the amount of radiation in half. The danger zone radius of the leak is 940m, or 94,000cm. We'll assume the edge of this border is the LD50 (Lethal Dose for 50% of exposed population) for humans, since Ryley seems to be of pretty average build. The LD50 of radiation in humans is about 5 Sieverts, or 5,000,000 banana's worth of radiation, if you'd prefer. Now remember me talking about the shielding effects of water on radiation? Well that 5 sieverts is about to go crazy, because every 7cm Ryley pushes into that wreck zone, it doubles, and if he's going to the Aurora's Drive Room to patch things up, the radiation level is going to double about 13,428 times. This can also be stated as the equation [Radiation in Drive Room = 5 x 2^13428] which comes down to the pleasant figure of about 8.506x10^4042 Sieverts. Now, I don't claim to be an expert, but I don't think the radiation suit's boasted "safety rating up to 400Sv/hr" is going to quite be enough to protect good ol' Ryley from that.

HOWEVER, that's just some surface Fermi approximation. We have to remember that the nuclear material spilling radiation into the environment isn't fully contained. Based on the fissures found in the Drive Room, it's safe to make an assumption that whatever nuclear isotope they were using for fuel is probably going into solution in the ocean water, and dispersing via currents and such. This could spread the radiation out a lot more equally, but also comes with its own set of contradictory issues; if radioactive materials were leaking out, then based on the 3-day dispersal of radiaton after repairing the Drive Room, the radioactive isotope has a very short decay rate. However, if the decay rate is that short, that raises some questions: How much fuel did they have? Was the Aurora enriching more, and if so, is it still? If within 3 days of freely decaying, the background radiation this isotope is putting out is benign, then within 3 days as reactor fuel, they would be equally spent, implying either MASSIVE stores of this radioactive material (unlikely) or the fabrication of more on-ship (seeing what technology mankind has advanced to, more likely, IMO). So that implies more is produced on ship, operating under the assumption that that chunk of ship stayed attached to the Aurora instead of becoming a Large Wreck (which under this theory, must be the case, else the radiation issue would be benign).

I'm not exactly sure what this implies, but I am pretty sure that from all the radioactive energy dumping into the room, the Drive Room should literally be boiling hot. And also figuratively "hot" i.e. Ryley isn't dying of cancer now, Ryley is cancer now.