12.2. Nuclear Physics

Now, for this Higher Level topic we are going to look into some more depth into the radioactive decay ideas we first looked at in Section 7.1. We look in more depth at these mechanisms of radioactive decay, and apply a bit of exponential decay mathematics. 

Clearly there are plenty of interesting case studies of radioactivity we could look at. For those who haven't seen it, one of my personal recommendations is  HBO's Chernobyl series, which looks at some of the reasons behind the core meltdown of the nuclear power station. Over the last decade there has been a huge project to prevent further release of nuclear material from the decaying remains of the power station by building a huge steel sarcophagus over the top. Take a look at this phenomenal engineering challenge below: