3 ms·

>> So, most of the worst radioactive elements are long gone You're wrong. Just facts: Cesium-137 half-life 30 years Strontium-90 half-life 28 years

• Retric 11y ago
  1986 + 28 = 2014, 1986 + 30 = 2016 Less than half of strontium 90 is left, and vary close to half of Cesium-137 is gone, but together they make up a small fraction of overall radiation released. Iodine 131 for example is one of the most dangrious isotopes after an event, but it's half life is 8 days.
  • pvaldes 11y ago
    Mmh... half of a bullet in the heart can kill you also... But we need also to take in mind that when some of those compounds vanish in fact they aren't gone, they convert in other subproducts. Uranium creates Cesium (and Iodine I think, i'm not expert on this) when decays, so the real cesium should be now 50% plus X (where X is the cesium constantly created since the accident). And Thorium, Polonium, Radium... What happens whith uranium in the subsoil when is burned in a fire?. Is its decay increased?
    • Retric 11y ago
      The half-life of uranium-238 is about 4.47 billion years and that of uranium-235 is 704 million years. So, they add meaningless amounts of Cesium. Anyway, the dust is something like 95% less radioactive now than it was right after the event and you get far less dust from a contaminated forest fire than you would from the initial fire. PS: Inside the reactor there is new stuff being generated from fission, but that's contained right now.