Warning: Chemistry talk - if you want to learn to speak chemistry - sign up for the intro chem course at YC.C. starting soon. For this quickie lesson - proton and neutrons live in the nucleus - electron exchange outside the nucleus makes normal chemistry happen. Nuclear chemistry is a sub-branch that erases the electronic properties and deals with strong and weak forces that hold atoms together.
Alpha Particle - this is a helium nuceus with its electrons stripped off. It is real particle matter - non-penetrating but like a nuke to the biological area that it goes off on.
Beta Particle - this is an electron stream. It is highly penetrating (goes thru things like a hot knife thru butter) and then all the biologics that were disrupted in the path have to rebuild their lives.
Gamma Ray - very high energy emitted as a fixed frequency dependent on the element.
Decay - Each radioactive element has a know emission sequence that sets off particles until it can rest in a stable non-radioactive state. Some of these are very unstable and happen in microseconds - some are very stable long-term and occur infrequently enough to allow a build-up.
Plutonium is forever was a catch phrases of the No Nuke movement. The stability is measured as a half-life. This is the time it takes for half of the material present to decay.
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