Most people don't realize that sunlight gives you a large dose of radiation every day. If you stay inside to avoid it, radiation from radon in the soil will get you inside. In addition, watching TV will irradiate you as will anythin electrical in your house.
The only way to hurt yourself with radiation is to handle nuclear fuel with your bare hands, fly over Chernoble before the containment sarcophagus was built or stand too close to a nuclear blast. Outside of those situations, the stress of worrying about radiation will do far more damage than the radiation will.

Before it's been burned of course! Uranium is a pretty benign radioactive element... it's an alpha emitter when it's not participating in fission reactions. Afterwards however the fuel is real nasty... lots of beta and gamma emissions.

Nothing to worry about... You get dosed with x-rays at the dentists office frequently but they don't make you radioactive either.

I was under the impression that they are kinda hot (though not as nasty as spent fuel)

In their unburned state they're only slightly radioactive (alpha won't even penetrate your skin) and they're completely cool to the touch.

Even though each pellet is about the size of the first joint in your pinky finger it contains more energy than a traincar full of coal or 168 barrels of oil. But you've got to get enough of them together with a sufficient amount of water to start the chain reaction, and by design that only happens in a reactor (all sorts of safeguards in place to prevent accidental criticality).

(I'm an engineer at a fuel fabrication plant).

Send me a few pellets if you get a chance, I can store them in my bedroom next to the A-10 Vulcan cannon depleted uranium rounds I agreed to take in order to prove that they are not radioactive enough to cause any harm (an argument here a few weeks ago).

Send the X-rayed sandwich for me to eat, too.

Uranium is slightly poisonous and can be very dangerous if inhaled or ingested, but outside the body it's a pussy cat... just don't get more than 42 pounds of it in a five gallon bucket of water and you'll be fine.

<ul><li><a href="http://www.uic.com.au/ral.htm">Radiation 101</a></li></ul>

Man, people are so freaked out when it comes to radiation.

It's an invisible, sometimes potentially deadly force. Live with it!

Once you turn it off, it's gone, just like a light bulb.

Food irradiation scares people, but it's completely safe, too. Light waves go through the food and kill whatever's living in there, but once you stop it all traces are gone. There's nothing "lingering."

The comments about fuel rods and the like aren't at ALL related to this, because radioactive sources are continually bombarding you with stuff (which MAY be bad stuff) -- being exposed to RADIATION can be bad, but being exposed (or eating) something which has BEEN exposed to radiation isn't a big deal... it's not continually there and it's not something physical that stays around.

Make any more sense?

All radiation is the same... it's all just electromagnetic waves (just like the visible light you and I see, and just like radio waves).

The higher frequency waves (shorter wavelength) carry a LOT more energy, so they can pack a wallop.

But they're all just different frequences of the exact same thing...

-B

Though certain types of radiation can make other elements radioactive. It won't happen in food though, that's for sure... bombard stainless steel with neutrons and any cobalt that's laying around will get turned into a gamma screamer...

Fortunately for all of us the only sources of free neutrons (aside from atomic weapons) are nuclear reactors, so this isn't a concern for 99.999999999% of the public... hehehehe