Quote:
Originally Posted by fchase8
In the mini-series, they say that if there was a thermal explosion of the meltdown core (if the water tanks beneath it exploded from the heat), it would decimate Byelorussia & Ukraine. That's what I was basing my worst-case scenario world on.
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Yep, that's the myth. Seriously any time you see lethal radiation covering huge areas, particularly for years (or centuries!), it's fictional.
The world has seen multiple nuclear reactor meltdowns (and literally hundreds of atmospheric nuclear tests), which have managed to produce zero large areas of deadly radiation. A few acres maybe. And yeah, there are a handful of areas a few miles across than have been dangerously contaminated as a result of fissionables *production* but even there we're talking about a few miles, not "Belorussia" and most of the hazard is chemical anyway.
The Chernobyl (and Fukushima) exclusion zones are a nod to public panic more than any real danger. You might run a somewhat higher cancer risk if you lived in them for a few years (how much is actually pretty controversial, because our estimates of the risks of low radiation exposure aren't actually based on very good data, estimates for the number of people killed by radiation induced cancers from those atmospheric tests range from hundreds to tens of millions as a result), but you are not going to drop dead from radiation poisoning. Certainly they wouldn't kill enough people to "decimate" a population. Not even in the literal sense of killing 10% of them.