In 1949, Project Green Run (at the Hanford nuclear site in Washington state) deliberately released 8,000 curies of radioactive iodine-131 into the environment over a 2-day period.
(Some conservative estimates cite 5,000 curies.)
According to Teri Hein, Atomic Farmgirl: Growing Up Right in the Wrong Place, 2000, 2003 …
“… between 1944 and 1972 Hanford released an estimated 740,000 curies of iodine-131, of which Green Run contributed 8,000. By contrast, it is estimated that the 1979 release from the Three Mile Island nuclear plant was about 15 curies. Thus the Green Run intentionally released more than 500 times as much iodine-131 as the Three Mile island accident.”
Plutonium-239 contamination also abounds on the Hanford site, and will gradually and continually seep into the Columbia River Basin.
Plutonium-239 has a half life of 24,000 years.
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