Why Hiroshima and Nagasaki Don't Look Like Chernobyl

[GeneralFalcon]

Hiroshima and Nagasaki: On purpose
Chernobyl: Unintentional

[MichaelSHartman]

The ten metric tonnes of radioactive material released from the Chernobyl plant was equivalent by weight to 1575 Hiroshima bombs. There were over 100 different radioactive isotopes with their respective half-lifes released, not two.

[JC-wcnu]

Easy way to put.

One had a bomb drop over them
The other legit had nuclear powersite.

[js]

The major thing you overlooked here is that the Chernobyl Disaster was caused by a STEAM EXPLOSION not a NUCLEAR (FISSION) EXPLOSION. In a fission explosion a large portion of the fuel is used up (ideally, if the device has high efficiency) and the radioactive byproducts leftover have a short half life so they decay in a reasonably short period of time. In a nuclear meltdown this does not occur. The radioactive products and byproducts can spread over an extremely large area and can be long lived.

So nice to correct a usually accurate source such as Infographics!!
👍🤓🍻

[Elgattox]

Chernobyl could also have Exploded even more powerful But the divers prevented it and saved many people.

[seankrake]

Some other important things to mention:
The atomic bombs were designed to have all of their fissile material fission during the blast. And they did. This left much less radioactive contamination leftover to contaminate the ground with.

Chernobyl was a pressure rupture, that caused actively fissioning material to be shot across the atmosphere. This meant that most of the radioactive material had its full potency, and thus the contamination produced much higher levels of radiation.

[EpicgamerYT]

Fun Fact: It's estimated that Chernobyl will be habitable again in about 20, 000 years.
The reactor site is expected to be uninhabitable for at least 20, 000 years.

[stdesy]

You neglected to mention the sheet AMOUNT of radioactive material in each. The fuel rods at Chernobyl were many thousand of pounds all together while the core of the bomb that detonated over Hiroshima was under 150 lbs

[marcuspacheco]

Basically power plants have alot of relatively stable nuclear material and bombs have a small amount of volatile material. When the bomb goes off most of that material is consumed and vaporized the greatest risk here is from the gamma ray bust and explosion effects. In Chernobyl we had a much smaller explosion that spread radioactive material all over the place. That dust is still all around the area giving off radiation.

[able]

Chernobyl wasn't a nuclear detonation. As heat builds up in a reactor it causes a rupture. In western designs for nuclear reactors the reactor is inside a containment structure so when the pressure is released its contained. Chernobyl didn't have this, and it blew out its contents into open air. The contents being the radioactive material in the fuel rods. That was turned to dust due to the heat. The moderator which is what slows the particles released by the reaction to create the heat can be removed to stop the reaction. Western reactors use water shutting it off stops the reaction. Soviet era ones used blocks of carbon which had to be removed with equipment or by hand. Hard to do when you're in a nasty situation.

[ukaszwalczak]

What's funny is, the Chernobyl Powerplant's other reactors operated until the 90s and even 2000s.

[joopkerver]

Allthough the wildlife in chernobil is doing pretty well!

[Prakkie]

Nuclear plants like Chernobyl contain around 200 tons of nuclear material, compared to the 5-6 kg in an atomic bomb. This difference explains why Chernobyl remains uninhabited, while cities like Hiroshima are inhabited again.

[einarnielsenntbch]

No, that is completely wrong. The area over which the fallout fell was much larger in Chernobil. The difference lies in the amount of radioactive material involved in the reaction. Hiroshima had about 60 kg of uranium 235, Nagasaki had about 5 kg of plutonium, but Chernobil had over 180, 000 kg of uranium.

[Noctudeit]

Also, there was no nuclear explosion in Chernoble. It was a chemical explosion initiated by nuclear heat.

[davidfuller]

Chernobyl also wasn't a nuclear explosion, it was a prompt criticality event that caused a steam explosion and then a hydrogen explosion (as in, hydrogen-oxygen burning, not like an h-bomb)... and the scale of radioactive stuff strewn all over the place is like, multiple orders of magnitude off from either Fat Man or Little Boy.

[sarahcantrell]

This was interesting. Thank you for making it!

[captainrobots]

Fukushima had the same problem as chernobyl but fukashima was from a natual disaster but they actually have most of the radiation cleaned up.
That was 2011.

[kazun]

Pay massive respect to the people sacrificed themselves to privent worst scenario happens

[peterdavis]

The bomb used the radioactive material to male a big boom. The meltdown just needed to melt through the reactor and the radioactive stuff mixed with the lava it made.