Topic summary
Long-range alpha
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Ternary fission.
Product energies
The energy of the third much-smaller product usually ranges between 10 and 20 MeV. In keeping with their origin, alpha particles produced by ternary fission typically have mean energies of about ~ 16 MeV (energies this great are never seen in alpha decay). Since these typically have significantly more energy than the ~ 5 MeV alpha particles from alpha decay, they are accordingly called "long-range alphas" (referring to their longer range in air or other media).