Can a radioactive moon affect life on a planet?

This question is meant as a reality check on this answer to The land grows evil and corrupted ... but why?

Radioactive moon in a nearly geosynchronous orbit. It slowly kills or alters all life exposed to it, but it doesn't hang perfectly still in the night sky.

It travels very slowly, circling the planet once every 500+ years, enough time for the far side of the planet to recover from its ill effects. People are forced into migrating every 500+ years to avoid the bad moon.

OK, I want to reality-check that. Could that work?

What I'm not interested in:

1. Ignore how was it even formed.
2. Ignore how humans evolved.
3. About two thousands years ago it just came to be, OK? Orbit is stable, it didn't wreak havoc on another moons orbits (or if it did, it is out of scope, it's OK now).

What I want to reality-check:

1. Could it be radioactive enough to cause significant cancer increase, radiation sickness and mutations?
2. Could that happen without moon exploding?
3. Could it work for 2000 years (that is merely 4 migrations)? I'm OK with "now it is not nearly as scary as in legends" here.
4. Could it affect patch significantly smaller than a whole hemisphere?

All of the above partial questions boil down to: What would be composition of this moon, or why it is impossible?

posted almost 7 years ago

Mołot‭

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