What is the half-life of Hydrogen-3 (tritium)?

Prepare for the WUSTL Radiation Safety Test with quizzes, flashcards, and detailed explanations. Perfect your understanding of radiation safety principles and boost your chances of success!

The half-life of Hydrogen-3, commonly known as tritium, is approximately 12.3 years. This means that after 12.3 years, half of a given quantity of tritium will have decayed into helium-3, a stable isotope. Understanding the half-life is crucial for applications involving tritium, especially in fields like nuclear medicine, radioluminescent devices, and environmental studies, where it is important to know how long the radioactive material will remain before it decays to safer levels.

In this context, the other options represent half-lives of different isotopes or are incorrect values for tritium. The choice of 5,700 years pertains to carbon-14, which is used in radiocarbon dating. The options reflecting 88 days and 60 days do not accurately relate to tritium and may refer to other isotopes with shorter half-lives. Therefore, the selection of 12.3 years is the accurate representation of tritium's radioactive decay timeframe.

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