
Why can Hiroshima be inhabited when Chernobyl cannot?  - johndcook
http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/64916/why-can-hiroshima-be-inhabited-when-chernobyl-cannot
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gus_massa
I really don't like the fist answer, the second answer is better. In my
opinion the main problem with Chernobyl is that the nuclear plant had a lot of
radioactive material and the graphite rods burned and spread a lot of the
fuel. The nuclear material in the Hiroshima bomb was much smaller. It only
considers this in an "edit".

 _> Edit: As pointed out, one thing I forgot to mention is that the amount of
fissionable material in an atomic bomb is usually considerably less than the
amount housed in a nuclear reactor. Obviously, having more fissionable
material drastically increases the amount of radiation that can be output._

And I'm not sure that the other facts are correct, for example:

 _> A fission explosion at ground level creates more radioactive isotopes due
to neutron activation in soil. Furthermore,_

I think that the amount of radioactive isotopes created by the neutrons is
very small, and this effect is negligible in the Chernobyl case. Anyone has
some data sources about this?

