Those 2 cities completely rebuilt....now beautiful cities...i never bought into the silly “half life” garbage they came up with....how would they seriously know that Plutonium had a half life of 200,000 years...thats some math equation they came up with in their heads. More over hype....
Half life is fact, not silly. Real Science. There is radiation everywhere.
What you probably relate to is that elements with huge half time, like the plutonium are rather harmless.
The elements with short half life like Iodine 131 (half life of 8 days) are what causes most damage during radioactive accidents of explosions. But, Because of short half time, they are gone in few weeks or months.
Radioactive Cesium and Strontium with halftime about 30 years are a lot less harmful, but stay around for a while. Plutonium is almost harmless. Short half time, lot of energy during that short time, long half time, less energy in the same given time.
That’s why the affected areas recover pretty quickly, but there reminds small, usually harmless residue for a long time. The hysterics see this residue and claim horrendous damage forever. The facts are that pretty quickly, these do no harm.
There is another fact - the harmful effects of radiation are highly overestimated. Thanks to stupid press, people are scared of radiation. Small amount of radiation are harmless or even good for you. The people who know that are rather afraid to tell you. Since they are scared of possible lawsuits or attack’s by the press, they put huge safety margins around what is considered safe to the point of ridiculousness.