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Is it possible to have Radon without Gama radiation being present?

I am not aware of any decay chain that doesn’t have ANY gamma, so it should be safe to say that No Gamma = No Radiation Since Radon comes from only two sources, Uranium 235 and Uranium 238, it should be impossible to have Radon with zero Gamma. If you wanted the short answer, stop reading here.

First the nonclamenture needs explaining for Electron Volts (eV).

K stands for Kilo, or 1,000, so KeV is 1,000 electron Volts.

M stands for Million eV, 1,000,000 electron Volts.

One thing to consider though, is there Gamma there that we can’t measure with hand held meters? Each meter, even each individual probe, will have a range of radiation energy (KeV to MeV levels) that it will measure. Higher or lower than this, and the meter won’t pick up THAT energy level radiation. But, look at this chart of Gamma levels in Uranium 238

Uranium 238 decay chart with Gamma energies listed

Note that the levels run from 45 KeV to almost 1,800 KeV, which means that it is likely that SOME of the Gamma will be detected.

Now, look at the Gamma levels in Uranium 235

Uranium 238 decay chart with Gamma energies listed

Note that the energy levels are lower, 27 KeV to 800 KeV, meaning that a detector that couldn’t detect lower than 827 KeV would miss much if not all of the Gamma radiation.

Now you have to look at the efficiencies of individual probes to see if they will indeed measure those levels. Look at the response curve (what levels it will measure) for the Ludlum model 19 probe

http://www.ludlums.com/RespCurvHtm/RC_M19.htm

From 50 KeV to about 1,200 KeV gets detected, so the Model 19 probe will measure most (not anything below 50 KeV) of the U 235. However, since U 238 has some radiation above 1,200 KeV that won’t be detected with the Model 19 probe.

Then consider the PM 1703 we are using, response curve runs from 0.06 to 3.0 MeV, or 60 to 3,000,000 electron Volts. So a small amount of the U 235 and U 238 will go undetected, can’t get through the plastic case of the meter.

Lastly, there is the efficiency of the meter, or how much of the total radiation actually reads or registers on the meter. This is what Bill Llope is going to remind the experts about, that even the most expensive handheld meters catches very, very, little of the total radiation, as low as 2 to 3% of the total radiation emitted.

A good analogy would be a police car trying to catch speeding cars. Some he might be too slow to catch, some he can (Response Curve in KeV). On the other hand, he can catch only so many speeding cars per hour, leaving the vast majority of cars whizzing by uncaught (Efficiency of the meter).

Now, it is possible to have Thoron, another radioactive gas, present but the Thorium decay chain also has plenty of Gamma. So, no radiation, no Radon (or Thoron).