The article states that " ....the April 1986 explosion at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, .... spewed roughly 200 Hiroshima bombs' worth of radiation across a region of Eastern Europe....."
Hmmm -- would that be the prompt gamma & neutron radiation in the first millisecond of the blast, or the fission products which did not fall down on Hiroshima due to the altitude of the blast, or both, or what ? How do you compare radiation exposures with dose rates millions of times slower ?
I'm not surprised when I see this type of lame comparison in the popular media. But in Science Magazine ? That really sucks.
Jaro