A mole of some chemical is a cardinal number and its a gross simplification but a "handful of stuff" has about ten to the twenty forth molecules or atoms. All to less than one sig fig. The exact number doesn't matter because enough half lives to dilute that much stuff to being statistically unlikely to contain less than 1 molecule is very large indeed. So at some point, where the radioactive activity is lower than say, a banana, or the ore it was dug out of, or a granite countertop, you just dump it. It takes a lot of half lives to take a banana down to zero radioactivity...
Probably the accident is somebody dumped the wrong bucket. You're supposed to dump bucket #32525 which has been aging for 100 half lives but accidentally bucket #64256 got dumped which was fresh. Or they reused buckets and markings (whoops there's two buckets labeled #15415)
A mole of some chemical is a cardinal number and its a gross simplification but a "handful of stuff" has about ten to the twenty forth molecules or atoms. All to less than one sig fig. The exact number doesn't matter because enough half lives to dilute that much stuff to being statistically unlikely to contain less than 1 molecule is very large indeed. So at some point, where the radioactive activity is lower than say, a banana, or the ore it was dug out of, or a granite countertop, you just dump it. It takes a lot of half lives to take a banana down to zero radioactivity...
Probably the accident is somebody dumped the wrong bucket. You're supposed to dump bucket #32525 which has been aging for 100 half lives but accidentally bucket #64256 got dumped which was fresh. Or they reused buckets and markings (whoops there's two buckets labeled #15415)