Why is Chernobyl deemed to not be habitable for 22,000 years despite reports and articles everywhere saying that the radiation exposure of being within the exclusion zone is less you’d get than flying in a plane or living in elevated areas like Colorado or Cornwall?
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u/Spiritual_Jaguar4685 basically answered the question but I’ll present it a different way:
The damage that radiation causes is extremely dose dependent. The more radiation the worse for you it is. Dose is, in turn, heavily distance and time dependent. The closer you are to the source, the higher the dose. The longer you spend close to the source, the higher the dose.
Just imagine a source of radiation as being a man with a rifle who stands in one place but randomly points the rifle in different directions and fires off bullets. The closer you are to the man with the rifle, the more likely one of his random bullets will hit you. The longer you stand there, the more likely a bullet or multiple bullets will hit you.
Now, what would be the worse case scenario? The worst case scenario would be that you swallow the man with the rifle and he’s standing ~~instead~~ inside of you, shooting bullets. Now, every bullet he fires is going to hit you. And, he’s hard to get out of you, so he’s going to be spending a lot of time inside of you shooting, which means you are going to be hit with many, many bullets.
That’s the worst case scenario at Chernobyl or other nuclear accident cites: That you swallow or otherwise get radioactive dust or dirt inside your body: say, through your mouth or into your lungs or even through your eyes. That dust will keep firing energy and particles into you from point blank range for as long as the dust stays in you. If you live in Chernobyl and eat food or drink water or breathe (you know, things that are required for humans to live) the likelihood of being contaminated with a radioactive particles is very high, which leads to chance of radioactivity poisoning or cancers.
But let’s look at some good news: ~~Radioactive particles~~ ~~Irradiated~~ radioactive dust from most nuclear bombs don’t tend to be as bad as a nuclear accident’s radiation. Nuclear bombs tend to make things around it radioactive, but much of the radioactive material that’s created as a short half life, meaning it becomes less radioactive very rapidly. The radioactive dust is still a problem but generally not on the scale of a nuclear accident like Chernobyl. This is why, during a nuclear attack, if you aren’t killed by the other effects of the nuke, simply staying inside for 48-72 hours to allow radioactivity to dissipate, you have a decent chance of escaping a lot of radioactive effects from fallout. Of course luck, proximity, and wind as well as medical treatment will all effect your chances of surviving. For example, the crew of Lucky Dragon 5 were accidentally absolutely covered in radioactive ash from a nuclear test and only 1 died of acute radiation poisoning (though they received pretty good medical care, including multiple blood transfusions.)
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