re: #313 Rightwingconspirator

It’s a terrible irony to observe nuclear detonations leave less radioactive aftermath than reactors do. Nagasaki population about a half million. Chernobyl? 500.

Actually nukes spread a lot more radioactive material around than the worst power plant accidents. The US above-ground nuclear tests dumped about 5 tonnes of plutonium and uranium-235 across the centre of the continental United States between 1945 and 1962 as well as tens of kilogrammes of fission products. The thermonuclear tests in the Pacific were worse, 150 megatonnes of detonations resulting in the entire ocean being polluted with Cs-134 and Cs-137 among other fission products.

The three reactors at Fukushima which exploded in 2011 released about 5 kilogrammes of fission products, much of which was short-lived isotopes like I-131 (half-life 8.5 days) which was very radioactive for a short time before it was gone.