How to Use radioactive in a Sentence

radioactive

adjective
  • Uranium and plutonium are radioactive.
  • And would the radioactive balls warm the ice so much that the ice flowed faster at the base, speeding the balls’ trip to the coast?
    — Paul Bierman, Smithsonian Magazine, 19 Sep. 2024
  • His tea was found to have been laced with radioactive polonium-210.
    — Pan Pylas, Anchorage Daily News, 21 Sep. 2021
  • Smaker was now radioactive, and six years of work had gone down the drain.
    — Sebastian Junger, National Review, 14 Oct. 2022
  • But what makes these wild German boars so radioactive in the first place?
    — Stephen C. George, Discover Magazine, 7 Nov. 2023
  • Many of the above radioactive isotopes were released into the ocean at the time of the disaster in 2011—and some traveled.
    — Chris Baraniuk, WIRED, 18 July 2023
  • Unwrap the plastic seal and don’t be alarmed that the cheese has developed a skin—it’ll all come out in the radioactive glow of the microwave.
    — Alex Beggs, Bon Appétit, 12 Dec. 2024
  • Clues pointing to the radioactive waste emerged in the process of sorting through this DDT history.
    — Rosanna Xia, Los Angeles Times, 21 Feb. 2024
  • It’s one of the only sites in the country that accepts radioactive waste from other states.
    — Washington Post, 15 Sep. 2021
  • Tritium has a radioactive half-life of a little over 12 years, according to the IAEA.
    — Bloomberg News, oregonlive, 3 July 2023
  • There are rolls of packing tape to seal the windows from radioactive fallout.
    — Adam Schreck, BostonGlobe.com, 4 Nov. 2022
  • Each impact creates a fireball about as hot as the core of the sun, followed by a radioactive mushroom cloud.
    — Max Tegmark, Time, 29 June 2023
  • The trace amounts of radioactive waste produced in fusion have a half-life of less than 200 years, which is quite manageable.
    — Wal Van Lierop, Forbes, 25 May 2021
  • Most Nevadans are opposed to storing the nation’s radioactive waste at the site about 100 miles from Las Vegas.
    — Michelle L. Price, ajc, 11 June 2021
  • Most Nevadans are opposed to storing the nation's radioactive waste at the site about 100 miles from Las Vegas.
    — Michelle L. Price, Star Tribune, 10 June 2021
  • Often, the meat of the pig is deemed too radioactive for human consumption and must be destroyed.
    — Stephen C. George, Discover Magazine, 7 Nov. 2023
  • By the middle of 2020, NSO was seen as radioactive by some in the investment fund’s leadership.
    — Ronen Bergman, New York Times, 2 Apr. 2023
  • The lead paint test tool contains small amounts of Cobalt-57, a radioactive metal used to make lead measurements.
    — Clara Longo De Freitas, baltimoresun.com, 19 Aug. 2021
  • The past Apollo missions followed a tight trajectory to avoid the most radioactive part of the belts and traversed at a high speed.
    — Mrigakshi Dixit, Smithsonian Magazine, 18 Jan. 2023
  • The sharpest sign of change was a surge in radioactive plutonium that started in Crawford Lake’s mud around 1950.
    — Emily Wright, Washington Post, 16 June 2023
  • It was completed in 2016 to prevent the spread of highly radioactive dust.
    — New York Times, 22 Jan. 2022
  • Spent fuel rods in storage continue to grow less radioactive, but the process is slow.
    — Philip Diehl, The Mercury News, 12 Aug. 2024
  • Jones urged Musk to watch out for radioactive isotopes being slipped into his food.
    — Christiaan Hetzner, Fortune, 11 Dec. 2023
  • With Kanye helming the production and serving as the lead artist, Ty colored between the lines and kept the songs rock steady despite Ye’s radioactive raps.
    — Carl Lamarre, Billboard, 27 Feb. 2024
  • These are life-changing events, like a death or getting bitten by a radioactive spider, that shape them.
    — Dina Kaur, The Arizona Republic, 21 June 2023
  • The heat from the explosion melted the sandy soil around the tower into a mildly radioactive, glassy crust now known as trinitite.
    — Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 8 May 2023
  • For example, smoke detectors use a radioactive source to detect smoke in the air.
    — WIRED, 8 Sep. 2023
  • All uranium is radioactive, and each isotope has its own unique half-life.
    — Kathryn Higley, The Conversation, 16 June 2023
  • But such a wrong turn ignores the long-unresolved problems of radioactive nuclear wastes that AI cannot wish away.
    — Michael Riordan, Scientific American, 31 Jan. 2025
  • The gas forms naturally through many processes, including radioactive decay in the crust.
    — Laura Paddison, CNN, 19 Feb. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'radioactive.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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