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What was the distribution of radioactive fallout after the Chernobyl accident?

Radioactive fallout is the term used to describe radioactive debris that is emitted into the air in the wake of a nuclear reactor explosion and settles back to the ground.

The radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl disaster, which contained the isotope cesium 137, was extremely uneven because of the shifting wind patterns. It extended 1,200 to 1,300 miles (1,930 to 2,090 kilometers) from the point of the accident. Roughly 50 tons of the reactor fuel, containing 50 to 100 million curies, was released. (A curie is a unit of radioactivity based on a standard rate of decay of a radioactive element.)

Nuclear contamination covered an enormous area of western Asia and Europe, including Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, and Lithuania (the central portion of the former Soviet Union); the Scandinavian countries; and Poland,...

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