How come the wildlife in Chernobyl isn't horribly irradiated mutants? Fukushima? Maybe you misunderstand what radiation actually is. How it actually affects you, and why this information is kept secret. Do you have any idea how much nuclear material is worth? Do you know that so called nuclear waste is the only way to make these materials? Plutonium for example is a byproduct of uranium fission, is plutonium cheap and easy to produce? What would you do to protect that plutonium since it's worth a nice chunk of cash? Or that cesium that's used in smoke detectors, or cobalt 60 that's used irradiate and sterilize your Chiquita bananas?.
The natural life cycle of many animals is too short to significantly have issues. Contrary to comics, most mutations effect embryos which are aborted. Those that live past birth are usually quickly consumed by predators or simply die shortly after birth.
Most (all?) smoke detectors no longer use cesium; see nuclear boy scout.
Humans currently live there too. So long as they are not consuming food (some are) from the contaminated areas, they shouldn't have issues.
Long term tumor risks over an 80-100 human lifespan is not the same as a 3-8 year lifespan common to many wild animals. Predation is an important aspect of natural wildlife life cycles.
All of which ignores, there are multiple radiation exposure models. We use the zero threshold model even though it's completely wrong. It's used because it's extremely conservative. Additionally, the other models require refinement, which requires human subjects.
And Chernobyl isn't a nuclear bomb. Nuclear reactors only have a 2% ~ 5% mix of U235/238 (might have the order wrong; less than 5% of the radioactive isotope). Bombs are near 95%, or "highly enriched uranium" .. which would likely have less radiation in the aftermath than a nuclear plan since everything would be consumed in the detonation ... but everything would be dead for obviously other reasons.
Much of the fallout of a nuclear bomb comes from the dirt becoming so neutron irradiated that they become unstable isotopes. But also the daughter particles of a nuclear bomb are also unstable even if the u235/238 is consumed. If you explode a bomb in atmosphere the fallout concerns are much less because you aren't kicking as much irradiated dirt into the atmosphere.
(post is archived)