Americium

Some of villages are heavily poisoned. The radiation here is even higher than it is near the reactor site.

If we take a Geiger counter reading on the road, then one on the grass and compare the two readings, the grass is 8.5 times more than the asphalt, because radiation becomes concentrated in living organisms. The source of this radiation is Americium.

Initially, things were not too bad here. This area was poisoned with Plutonium-241 and a strange quirk of this element is that it is not very radioactive at first. It waits quietly for 14.4 years and then decays into components that include Americium-241 which produces powerful gamma rays, real cannon balls compared to the "bird-shot" particle radiation of the original Plutonium.

Movies showing today and movies coming soon were listed on the chalkboard at the club. The next coming attraction will be four centuries.

There will be no more lessons in this school classroom, either. The only lesson taught here now is that the physical half-life of Americium-241, the daughter of Plutonium-241 is more then 400 years. Our ancestors in the distant future will still be living with the consequences of this decay cycle, when our bones are dust.