No, they're not. While they're definitely not good for you they're not anything special when it comes to toxic materials. You're just unaware of all the other equally poisonous stuff humanity deals in at "industrial scales", most of which doesn't get safer by ignoring it.
At least we can detect radiation with simple equipment. Detecting most other types of contamination with some type of molecule that's no good for organic life even at low doses is far more involved. Until people start keeling over you generally have no idea whether there's bad stuff in your dirt or water.
The factories that make all sorts of things that make your modern life possible necessarily handle some stuff that's really, really, nasty in the concentrations in which they handle it.
Yes, they are - an unshielded used fuel road will give anyone within feet of it a lethal dose of ionising radiation literally in seconds. They’re over 10,000 rem/h, and exposure to 100+ causes acute radiation sickness and death.
If your oven can give you a fatal dose of anything in seconds, I recommend replacing it ASAP.
Sticking your hand in a food-grade oven will not give you burns. When you touch the insides, you will receive second degree burns, but those burns are not going to be fatal. On top of that, the oven can be turned off, and is completely safe to handle in that state. and the oven will need to be state.
Comparing your oven with spent fuel rods is ridiculous (assuming you are referring to a food-grade oven operated on gas or electricity).
But you will be aware that you are being hurt. And only you will be hurt.
A single fuel rod can kill millions without them even knowing why they are dying.
Your daughter will not die from playing with a burning stove, she will burn her fingers and stop. In Brazil, a little girl ate an egg with radioactive dust on it. [0]
Your stove will not slowly kill people living on the other side of the wall.[Happened in russia].
The water supply will not be ruined if you drop your stove into it. If someone puts your oven in a truck full of fertilizer and detonates it in a large city, it will not kill millions of people and make a large area unsuitable for human life for thousands of years.
So fuel rods really are ferociously dangerous, in a way that very little else on this earth is.
The same farcical logic can be applied to any substance in a hazardous concentration. PFAS, heavy metals, the list is long. Sure they won't instantly fry you but it's basically guaranteed terminal illness if you have enough expose.
As we've seen from the industrial hazards of the 20th century, once people start dropping dead the living start asking questions. It's impossible to really kill that many people with a spill of any type. Poison a watershed, render land uninhabitable, sure, but killing millions is childish fantasy.
Radiation is easily detectable, compared to say, carbon pollution and its effect on health. If it were actually released into the environment, we'd know about it.
No that's not true, radiation is not easily detectable it requires advanced instruments. Humans can't detect it at all. Instantly lethal doses will cause you to vomit, but you're a already a walking corpse by then.
Carbon pollution you can smell and feel long before it's lethal.
You know perfectly well that until Geiger counters or scintillation counters are regularly included in smartphones, people will simply not be carrying them. So, no, it's not easily detectable for the vast portion of the human population.
Plutonium-239 [0] is the byproduct of the fission process in Uranium-235 [1], of which the fuel pellets are composed.
The modern, large scale nuclear reactor was designed for making plutonium, not energy [2].
PU-239 has a half life (meaning it will be emit half as many radioactive particles per second) of 24,000 years. PU-239 is a gamma emitter [3], meaning its radioactive particles can slice through DNA, causing chromosomal and heritable damage.
So... it's not quite accurate to say they're "not dangerous." BTW, there is no way to "dilute" radiation, it doesn't work that way. Radiation comes from subatomic particles, not the matter they're contained in. Moving the matter (container) around doesn't "dilute" the particles, it only exposes more people to them!
The only part they have in common is the idea of fissioning uranium, which results in plutonium. I was merely pointing out that, even at the origin, plutonium creation and contamination was a big problem. The Hanford Site still isn't cleaned up today!
No, they're not. While they're definitely not good for you they're not anything special when it comes to toxic materials. You're just unaware of all the other equally poisonous stuff humanity deals in at "industrial scales", most of which doesn't get safer by ignoring it.
At least we can detect radiation with simple equipment. Detecting most other types of contamination with some type of molecule that's no good for organic life even at low doses is far more involved. Until people start keeling over you generally have no idea whether there's bad stuff in your dirt or water.
The factories that make all sorts of things that make your modern life possible necessarily handle some stuff that's really, really, nasty in the concentrations in which they handle it.