What is the range of nuclear fallout?

Question

Not from a nuclear bomb, but in the small chance that a US nuclear reactor plant has a meltdown.

Will mountains block the fallout, and do prevalling winds have a factor in this?

Answer 1

how windy is it ?

Answer 2

glowing reindeer?

can I have an ounce of what you are smoking?

Dr Jello is right. contamination.........like at 3 Mile Island.......is limited to the containment building..... get that word....containment?

Chernobyl was such a mess up because the containment building blew.....an area about 10 miles around is the dead zone; people were affected up to 50 miles away by fallout carried on the wind. I hasten to add that Chernobyl was a design never built in the West and an accident where the operators manually overrode three separate safety systems...they couldn't have created a bigger accident if they had deliberately set out with a carefully thought out plan for maximum damage.

When you consider that France gets 80% of it's electricity form nukes, and that the US and Royal Navies have operated reactors for 6,334 years ( an amazing but true number) without one single sailor getting sick let alone dying......well I wouldnt worry about nuc power plants

Answer 3

Winds would have a factor in how it is  spread but not so much in intensity It would depend on what the material was and how much of it there was. for distance it is roughly double the distance and half the intencity.

I dont think you realy have to wory much about a meltdown ae the safety factor is very great

Answer 4

The range is limited to the inside of the containment building.

Nuclear power is safer than flying a commercial jet.

Answer 5

Wind is what distributes airborne contamination, radioactive or otherwise, in what is called a plume.  Mountains can influence the shape of the plume if they are downwind of the source.  The lethal area would be anyplace within several miles of the source.  There's no sharp cutoff point.  The danger becomes gradually less farther from the source as the contaminant is diluted by the air.

Answer 6

The Chernobyl was first detected all over Europe by their nuke plants.  People where contaminated on the way in.  I remember reading about all the reindeer in Scandinavia glowing in the dark from this contamination, whole herds being killed and buried.

Thats one reason you only want Renewable Energy for power production.  If it uses fossil or nuclear fuels it will kill you.

Answer 7

This may help

Answer 8

Winds are a factor that causes more to fall in some locations and less in others, but detectable amounts of fallout would probably be found world wide, because we can now detect EXTREMELY small amounts.