Bringing up unrelated highly controversial topics is not good. It tends to derail threads and accumulate emotionally charged, poorly informed comments.
But anyway, leaks of radioactive materials are inherently much easier to detect than other kinds of leaks because they are radioactive. Every major hospital in the developed world has a radiation safety department or equivalent performing regular leak and contamination testing in association with scintigraphy and brachytherapy, but this has not prevented the widespread use of radionuclides in medicine.
The notion of "contaminat[ing] everything they touch" is also a misconception that the radiation protection community has tried to combat for decades: radiation is only a meaningful hazard insofar as it reaches levels comparable to the natural background radiation produced by 40K, 14C, and other sources pervasive in the natural environment. There is therefore a level of dilution beyond which radioactive contamination ceases to be of meaningful concern, just as is true with all other toxic substances.
Source: as a medical physicist in training, I work with a radiation safety department at a major US hospital.
But anyway, leaks of radioactive materials are inherently much easier to detect than other kinds of leaks because they are radioactive. Every major hospital in the developed world has a radiation safety department or equivalent performing regular leak and contamination testing in association with scintigraphy and brachytherapy, but this has not prevented the widespread use of radionuclides in medicine.
The notion of "contaminat[ing] everything they touch" is also a misconception that the radiation protection community has tried to combat for decades: radiation is only a meaningful hazard insofar as it reaches levels comparable to the natural background radiation produced by 40K, 14C, and other sources pervasive in the natural environment. There is therefore a level of dilution beyond which radioactive contamination ceases to be of meaningful concern, just as is true with all other toxic substances.
Source: as a medical physicist in training, I work with a radiation safety department at a major US hospital.