How 'bright' would a lethal dose of radiation be? I watched the Chernobyl TV series with my family and my mom and brother seemed to have a hard time understanding how radiation works, and thought the show was overstating its effects. 
It can be hard to understand something we can't see, so I thought what if I could demonstrate different levels of radioactivity by bringing those radioactive particles into the visible spectrum.
The Question I asked myself is "If you were standing in a room with a 100W light bulb and the photons were replaced with radioactive decay particles, how much radiation would you be exposed to" 
You could also compare it by equivalent energy because the energy of the particles is much higher than visible light. So you could either go for the same number of photons, or the same amount of energy. 
I would vote for total power though. A 100W incandescent bulb is only ~5% efficient, so that would be 5 Joules per second.  
In Chernobyl, a firefighter picked up a chunk of graphite that was the equivalent of 4 million chest x-rays, which by the shows math (3.6 Roentgen = 400 xrays) would be 36000 Roentgen. Wikipedia says one roentgen deposits 0.0096 Gy (0.96 rad) in soft tissue. A Grey (Gy) is defined as 1 joule of radiation absorbed per Kg, so the graphite chunk in the firefighters hand would be emitting 345.6 Joules of absorbable radiation. So compared to a 5% efficient incandescent bulb, that would be a 7000W bulb.  But thats just the amount of radiation absorbed, i'm sure it is emitting much more that is not absorbed. 
Anyway, thats as far as i've gotten. I would like to make a YouTube video on this and i want to get it right. Im sure there are some inaccuracies, but is this an accurate representation? I also want to compare different radioactive materials. like showing how it would only take a very tiny amount of Plutonium-241 to equal the decay rate of U-235.
Thanks,
Kevin
 A: There are 3 kinds of radiations from radioactive materials: 1) Alpha radiation, which is emission of helium nuclei (alpha particles). This radiation is not very penetrating and can be stopped by a sheet of tissue paper. It usually won't get through your skin,from which you might deduce that it's not dangerous, but you'd be wrong. The danger from alpha radiation comes when you ingest an alpha emitter into the lungs or digestive tract, especially the lungs. Alpha particles do a lot of damage, because they carry a double charge (double that of the electron),and are very dangerous. 2) Beta radiation,in which the radioactive material emits beta particles (electrons) at fairly high velocities. Being so light they are not very penetrating, but unless they have been slowed by a few feet of air, they can penetrate your skin. However, they are not as dangerous as alphas. 3) Gamma radiation. This consists of very high energy electromagnetic waves, or photons, similar to x-rays but much shorter wavelength. It is very penetrating and very dangerous, but can be stopped by a few hundred metres of air. Another emission you sometimes get from  radioactive materials is free neutrons; these can cause damage but are usually nothing to worry about. They decay with a half life of 10.5 mins, becoming a proton and emitting an electron and a neutrino. 
