Chernobyl Compared To Other Radioactivity Releases - Chernobyl Compared With An Atomic Bomb

Chernobyl Compared With An Atomic Bomb

Far fewer people died as an immediate result of the Chernobyl event than died of radiation at Hiroshima, and the eventual total is also significantly less when including those 4,000 to ~41,000 predicted by the WHO and International Journal of Cancer to die in the future. Due to the differences in half-life the different radioactive fission products undergo exponential decay at different rates. Hence the isotopic signature of an event where more than one radioisotope is involved will change with time.

Some comments have been made in which the radioactive release of the Chernobyl event is claimed to be 300 or 400 times that of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The work of SCOPE suggests that the two events can not be simply compared with a number suggesting that one was XX times larger than the other.

The radioactivity released at Chernobyl tended to be more long lived than that released by a bomb detonation hence it is not possible to draw a simple comparison between the two events. Also, a dose of radiation spread over many years (as is the case with Chernobyl) is much less harmful than the same dose received over a short period.

The relative size of the Chernobyl release when compared with the release due to a hypothetical ground burst of a bomb similar to the Fat Man device dropped on Nagasaki. A ground burst creates considerably more fallout than the air bursts used at Hiroshima or Nagasaki. This is due in part to Neutron activation of ground soil and greater amounts of soil being sucked into the nuclear fireball in a ground burst than in a high air burst.
Isotope Ratio between the release due to the bomb and the Chernobyl accident
90Sr 1:87
137Cs 1:890
131I 1:25
133Xe 1:31
A comparison of the gamma dose rates due to the Chernobyl accident and the hypothetical nuclear weapon.

The graph of dose rate as a function of time for the bomb fallout was done using a method similar to that of T. Imanaka, S. Fukutani, M. Yamamoto, A. Sakaguchi and M. Hoshi, J. Radiation Research, 2006, 47, Suppl A121-A127. Our graph exhibits the same shape as that obtained in the paper. The bomb fallout graph is for a ground burst of an implosion-based plutonium bomb which has a depleted uranium tamper. The fission was assumed to have been caused by 1 MeV neutrons and 20% occurred in the 238U tamper of the bomb. It is assumed that no separation of the isotopes occurred between the detonation and the deposit of radioactivity. The following gamma-emitting isotopes are modeled 131I, 133I, 132Te, 133I, 135I, 140Ba, 95Zr, 97Zr, 99Mo, 99mTc, 103Ru, 105Ru, 106Ru, 142La, 143Ce, 137Cs, 91Y, 91Sr, 92Sr, 128Sb and 129Sb. The graph ignores the effects of beta emission and shielding. The data for the isotopes was obtained from the Korean table of the isotopes. The graphs for the Chernobyl accident were computed by an analogous method.

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