How would nuclear contamination go if there had been an incident inside a building?

Question

I’m guessing you can’t throw the whole building away, so what would happen? Would it ever be safe to return to? For the purposes of the question, let’s say it’s contamination on the level of needing professional involvement

In: Chemistry

Answer 1

You can in fact throw a whole building away. You may not have to, but any parts of it that have been exposed will be carefully torn out, disposed of, and replaced. If too large a portion is exposed, or removing the exposed portions would cause the rest to be structurally unsound, you have to take it all down. You do it carefully, to avoid kicking up dust into the air that carries the contamination, but ultimately you are throwing the building away.

Of course, in many cases if the contamination is that bad, you can’t really pull the building down safely. In that case, you might just have to leave it there, put a fence around it and put up signs telling nobody to go near. You might have to cover it up by pouring concrete all over it. You might even need to evacuate the area around it completely for a very long time.

Would it ever be safe to return? Yes, but how long depends on the degree of contamination, and whether or not the contamination could be removed. Some accident sites like Chernobyl won’t be safe for over 20,000 years. On the other hand, a small accident that can be completely cleaned up and removed, might be safe as soon as the contaminated material is removed.

It all depends on the scale of the incident. A small amount of radioactive material spilled outside of a proper container? You might just need to clean a single room of a lab, and replace anything it touched. A nuclear reactor breech? You might need to quarantine a large area of land for thousands of years.

It all depends on what sort of contamination it was, how much, and whether or not everyone involved did their best to contain it as soon as there was a problem.