Benefits of nuclear science
Environmental air quality testing
Nuclear science provides a wide range of benefits and has applications in many areas.
Most people are aware of benefits such as generating power and manufacturing nuclear medicines for cancer diagnoses and treatment. However the range of applications extends from practical applications in food and agriculture (irradiation; improving crop yields), environmental science (pollution tracking and climate change modeling), historical research and archaeology (radiocarbon dating and imaging technologies), through to the prosaic and everyday applications such as smoke alarms in households and industrial gauges that are used in industries from mining to food and beverage packaging.
Radioisotopes are commonly used for analysis, quality control and safety checking in a wide range of industries from mining and manufacturing to food production and packaging. Radioisotopes are also used as tracers in many research areas. Naturally occurring radioisotopes are used particularly in dating, such as estimating the age of water from underground bores from the activity of naturally occurring radioisotopes in the water.
Nuclear science itself is a research tool used by scientists of all disciplines. (see neutron scattering applications)