Does a radioactive isotope bombarded with radiation decay at the same rate?

Answer 1

Heavy bombardment causes accelerated reactions, but such bombardments leave obvious traces, that is track marks in the materials from heavy decay particles.

Answer 2

Radioactive decay, in any form, always decays at the same rate. However, since the material is constantly decaying, there is less of it to decay, and a decreased amount of radiation is observed (I think this is what flori is thinking of), but the rate stays the same.

Swbarnes2 brings up a good point. One could bombard a radioisotope with, say, neutrons and speed up the apparent decay rate. However, now we're talking about apples and oranges. How about an example:

Uranium-238 decays naturally by alpha emission with a half-life of 4.47E9 yrs. So, a very small fraction of the uranium will have disappeared while you are looking at it (even in your lifetime if you think about it). However, if you bombard U-238 with fast spectrum neutrons, the uranium undergoes a (n,gamma) capture reaction and becomes U-239. The U-239 then beta decays to Np-239 with a half life of only 23.47 minutes. So, while the apparent rate of decay has increased about 14 orders of magnitude, the actual decay rates for either isotope are still fixed.

Hope this helps

Answer 3

No, rate of decay keeps on decreasing as the quantity of radioactive substance decreases.