Or just make them tick very rarely, like once a minute. What about making it ONE block, that (on creation) takes the appearance of the one it replaced? (It IS possible to have variable texture on blocks, right?) Maybe a small glow, but they should be hard to identify; If you blow a nuke in the forest it WILL be lethal for a long time unless you stip away all the dirt and maybe even the stone below...
So on these "radiactive ticks", every radioactive block will have a chance to trigger the AoE damage (Chance to make it less predictable). Also they will randomly reduce some "radiactivity level" that both determine damage and, when it runs out, changes the block back to the original non-radioactive one. Maybe there should be a "scrubber" terraformer that remove them...
These blocks will of course have to share a similar step sound, minespeed and all that, so what about stone material (quite neutral, dull sound) and a fairly low minespeed unaffected by tools (0,5 sec?)
Now, these blocks shouldn't be LOLWTFDEAD? GIven that they tick rarely and even then only damages if the dice rolls their way (Chance determined by radioactivity level), half a heart in a pretty long radius (7 blocks?) won't be a lot unless you build a house there.
Although I have a feeling this won't be implemented as a matter of principles; If they pull stuff off the "nonono" list, people might just start trying to being up EVERYTHING in there and thus negate its purpouse...