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The half life of a radioisotope, or anything with a half life, is the period of time in which any individual component has a 50% chance of undergoing a reaction. Suppose you have 100 atoms of a radioisotope and the half life is 1 day. After a day, 50% (half) of the atoms will have decayed so there will be 50 left. After another day, half of those will decay and there will be 25 left. After another day there will be a 50% chance there will be 13 or more and the same chance of 12 or less and so on. This has serious consequences for radioactive waste. If you start of with a tonne of it and it has a half life of 10,000 years, it will be 60,000 years before there is less than 16 kilograms.

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16y ago

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