I saw a video that said that Chernobyl will not be habitable for another 20,000 years. I was curious as to why it takes so long to clean up radioactive contamination? Also for Chernobyl specifically as technology progresses couldn’t we find new methods that significantly reduce the amount it takes for Chernobyl to be habitable again?
Sorry for bad Grammer.
In: Chemistry
Radioactive contamination is when tiny particles of radioactive elements get stuck on stuff. At Chernobyl, over 50 *tons* of radioactive particles were released into the air and deposited in thin layers over everything in a wide area. The buildings, the sidewalks, the streets, the plants, the soil, groundwater…etc. The only way to get rid of it is to move all of the contaminated stuff to somewhere safe for storage until the radiation naturally decays.
In the case of Chernobyl, that means you have to take apart thousands of buildings, root up and bury millions of trees, and thousands of square kilometers of grass and dirt, do all of that without releasing more radioactive dust into the environment to spread, and then bury all that stuff somewhere far away from people where the radiation can decay.
Now, The Soviet Union did remove large amounts of trees and topsoil and buried it safely, but it’s just not possible to completely do that over the entire contaminated area, and there’s nothing anyone can do about the groundwater. At the end of the day, the only feasible thing is to just isolate the area and let the radiation naturally decay.
In terms of technology, there’s just not really anything that can be done. We’re talking about countless numbers of tiny particles stuck to everything and in everything. There’s just no technology grab them up the rate that the radiation decays can’t be changed, so we just have to wait.
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