Quote:
Originally Posted by ikalugin
Majority of the fallout was in the short lived isotopes, which have decayed by now.
Apart from the small pockets of lethal radiation (which are well known and marked) it is safe to stay in the exclusion zone, especially during winter.
Farming is different, but people do that too and select crops can sort of be grown and consumed.
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Sorry to correct you, but what you write is the exact replication of what official russian propaganda spilled out in the last decades.
Caesium is and will be strong and present in muhrooms and vegetables of all kinds e.g. in Germany, but also in other european countries which happened to lie in the path of the cloud emerging back then. And it of course accumulates in the body.
While it is true that a lot of the heavy plutonium was washed down from the lower atmosphere by rain, it stays in the ground and is not only radioactive in the smallest doses (speaking of one millionth gram here), but is also highly toxic. For some million years to come.
They first said about 50 to 60 kilograms of plutonium evaporated in the first blast, while in the last decade the fallout being mentioned in official reports shrunk to about 50 kilograms, and ten kg of other (lighter) nucleotids like Caesium etc..
I guess it will shrink to 20 kg in a year or so in official reports, until everybody forgets about it entirely
But you can then add 700 kilograms of also radioactive graphite, spreading all over the area and up to Iceland.
Maybe you find it assuring that especially the plutonium is not in tmosphere or on the ground anymore, but to know it's a centimeter deeper does not really convince me, of it all being so harmless. It is already in the food chain, and it will accumulate.