Uninhabitable areas inside the U.S.A.?

Question

I was wondering, are there any uninhabitable areas inside the United States because of radiation from atomic / nuclear testing?
If not, what about other countries / places?

Answer 1

The city of Chernobyl in the Ukraine remains uninhabitable due to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, and the people who lived near it now suffer from a high incidence of cancer. The Three Mile Island accident resulted in a relatively small release of radioactive material, and is not considered to have contaminated the area, which remains inhabited, although the plant itself is contaminated and unsafe. There are nuclear dumping sites in the Rocky Mountains that have keep-out zones, but the mountains were probably not considered habitable to begin with.

Answer 2

The noted author Roger Zelazny wrote an article on this, years ago, on the 25th anniversary of the Trinity test at Alomogordo NM.

The site is still on a US Army base, so it is restricted most of the time. But one day a year, it is open to the public, and he went there, with authorization.

You would have thought that a nuclear bomb would render everything uninhabitable until the end of time. But the desert winds filled the crater in with sands (no help from bulldozers!) and the desert plants and animals gradually moved back in. There are now cacti and lizards and everything else there, perfectly normal. The background radiation is only a little bit above what it is everywhere else.

Zelazny's article concluded on a note of relief that we can't permanently destroy the enivronment.

A similar article in National Geographic after the Mt. Saint Helens volcanic eruption showed one week after the eruption-- it looked like the surface of the Mooon with dead tree trunks, all cold grey ashes and little craters (ponds.)

The opposite page showed ONE YEAR later, with everything green and growing. The heat burned away dead leaves and underbrush, which had prevented sunlight from reaching the forest floor, and caused long-buried seeds to germinate. It was the exact same spot-- you could clearly see this, from the terrain, the same little ponds, and the same dead tree trunks sticking up.

Volcanic eruptions put many, many times more dust, dirt, soot and radioactive particles into the atmosphere than nuclear weapons have. They do this repeatedly and naturally, several times a century. Yet, the planet survives.

The noted author Larry Niven has pointed out that radioactive waste does not stay radioactive forever. In six hundred years, according to his calculations, enough of the atoms have decayed so that the radioactivity level is no greater than the ore from which the fuel elements were originaly extracted. That is why we ought to reprocess waste, instead of throwing away good fuel by burying it. (See his article Another Modest Proposal)

I hope this answers your questions. yes, we should not pollute, or use nukes, etc. But the planet is a lot more rugged and has much more capability for recovery than we realize.

7 NOV 06, 1622 hrs, GMT.

Answer 3

The nuclear testing in the US was done on designated nuclear testgrounds. So, the areas aren't open to the general population.
I watched a special about some islands in the south Pacific where Thermonuclear explosions had taken place. The narrator was saying how toxic the vegetation on the island was. Yet, there was all kinds of normal looking wildlife and fish around the island. If the radiation was so toxic how is all the wildlife surviving?

Answer 4

The trinity test site in New Mexico in the US is off limits for radiation.

The city of Chernobyl in the Ukraine is still entirely evacuated due to radiation from the 1986 reactor explosion.

Curiously, both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were never evacuated and are now populous cities in spite of having been atomic bombed in 1945. I believe this is because the bombs exploded several thousand feet above the ground, which greatly reduced radioactive fallout.

Answer 5

Southern Nevada, just north of Las Vegas is the Nellis testing range, off limits to everybody. Yucca Valley on the west side has over 50 nuclear craters inside its confines. Most are from underground blasts but even those leave radioactive holes.

Answer 6

The Love Canal in New Jersey was closed to humans. Because of toxic chemical dumping, not nuclear.

Incidentially, people still live adjacent to Cheronobynl, the plant itself is unguarded and approachable by anyone that wants to take the chance. There's still background radiation.

Answer 7

Not so much from testing anymore. But there are mines that are off limits because nuclear waste is being stored there. My dad played around the "A" mountain near Las Cruces, NM, when he was a kid. We visited the place awhile back; he wanted to show it to me, but couldn't. There was a fence around the entire mountain, AND a radiation warning. Grrr!

Answer 8

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Answer 9

Is three mile island still hazardous?