How to Use radioactive in a Sentence

radioactive

adjective
Definition of radioactivenext
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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 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
  • One of those mines, the site of a nuclear test in the 1970s, remains potentially radioactive.
    — Matt Simon, Wired, 3 Mar. 2022
  • The particle has its roots in studies of the weak force, which controls the decay of radioactive elements.
    — Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 9 Sep. 2022
  • The video ends with a pitch for nuclear power, never mind the unsolved question of what to do with its radioactive waste products.
    — Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 22 Aug. 2023
  • One telltale sign of a near-Earth supernova is the presence of the radioactive isotope Iron-60.
    — Jennifer Leman, Popular Mechanics, 31 Dec. 2021
  • Still more, living downwind from blast zones, would be at risk of illness or death from radioactive fallout.
    — Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics, 29 Mar. 2022
  • In the spring of 1986, in their rush to flee the radioactive plume and booming fire that burned after the Chernobyl power plant exploded, many people left behind their dogs.
    — Katherine J. Wu, The Atlantic, 3 Mar. 2023
  • Then there was the matter of all the radioactive waste and unexploded munitions.
    — Maureen O'Hare, CNN, 14 Dec. 2024
  • Coronal mass ejections leave a geological record on Earth—an elevated level of a radioactive carbon isotope that appears in tree rings and ice cores.
    — Gayoung Lee, Smithsonian Magazine, 16 Dec. 2024

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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