Originally Posted by Ron Bennett

An oil refinery problem doesn't spread radioactive material, including highly dangerous Cesium-137 and Strontium-90 all over the place...

Both of those have medium length decay half-lives of around 30 years, and are readily taken up by the body.

The Potassium iodide pills one sees advertised all over the place for dealing with radioactive Iodine-131 provides NO protection against Caesium-137 / Strontium-90 exposure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesium-137

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strontium-90

With an oil spill, one just cleans up and life goes on ... there's no simple way to clean up radioactive fall-out other than abandoning large swathes of land, as Russia did, and waiting out the decay process for many decades to a few centuries.

Ron