> ...The rolls were 'hot' when fresh out of the reactor and we would store and let 'cool' down for 6 months...
> I was more worried about exposure to the caustic than any potential radiation exposure.
No clue as to why the 6-month wait was imposed.
But, those who might irradiate their brood boxes, honey supers, eat strawberries, whatever have ***nothing*** to fear.
Nothing run through a beam of any of alpha, beta, or gamma radiation at any strength for any period of time will become radioactive.
Gamma irradiation sterilizes things, so it makes things safer for humans than they'd otherwise be, without any tangible difference anyone would ever notice.
But people and things can become "radioactive" if the radiation source is neutron radiation.
Neutrons have significant mass, so when you are firing them at something they do much more damage than beta, or gamma rays.
But even then, it is hard to make a person "radioactive" - far easier to make dust radioactive, hence the "dirty bomb" scares years ago.
Now, if I fire my imaginary cold-fusion neutron radiation pistol at Gene, and he is foolish enough to stand still long enough, some of those neutrons would be captured by the salt in his body, and the normal stable sodium-23 becomes sodium-24.
Gene is now "The Beekeeper With Radioactive Sweat".
You'd want to give him lots of elbow room for a day or so, as sodium-24 emits an electron and TWO gamma rays as it decays to Magnesium. So Gene is temporarily a low-level source of Gamma rays himself. None of this would be good for Gene's health, as it would mess up his blood something fierce. There's salt in blood. And the neutrons do other damage. Regardless if poor Gene lives or dies from the radiation, he would no longer be radioactive by the next morning.
The bombs dropped on Japan at the end of WWII turned a lot of very stable, boring cobalt-59 in steel girders to cobalt-60 from the bombs' neutron radiation. Those steel beams were very weakly radioactive, in that they produced measureable gamma rays, but not enough to do any more harm.
Enough particles... my wife's bachelor buttons are covered with bees, and as I still cannot visit my hives, I may just line them back to where they live, maybe find a bee tree. More likely a bee soffit.
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