How’s this any different than looking at your feet through one of those old time foot X-ray machines, (sadly I’m old enough to remember, and still alive)
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Yes, the melted slag “elephant’s foot” is composed of “corium”, but I think there was corium at Thee Mile Island too, so yet another important scientific discovery we beat the Soviets to! USA! USA! USA!!!
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Elephant feet wouldn’t fit in those things.
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I’ll admit to a smattering of hyperbole there. Much like the DMZ in Korea, wildlife’s retaking of the area is certainly worth seeing firsthand. And given that Chernobyl featured so highly in my childhood, it would be neat to see the sarcophagus from a distance…but not neat enough to make me plan a vacay to that part of the world any time soon.
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getting an internal dose equivalent of x rem, probably has less “real” biological effect than an acute external
Riiiiight… that’s why radionuclide safety procedures are “eat it, it’s safer than external exposure.” 
In all seriousness, though, I think we are talking past one another… let me be more specific: an acute dose of radiation when resulting from an internal radionuclide exposure (through ingestion/inhalation or other internal exposure) is worse than external exposure because (1) chemical transport of radionuclides tend to concentrate into specific organ systems (e.g. radioactive iodine and the thyroid; strontium an bones); (2) radiation damage may interact with chemical toxicity of a radionuclide (e.g. uranium toxicity); (3) external alpha radiation stops more or less at the skin, internal alpha radiation may affect, for example, DNA and RNA of internal organ systems. External exposure to beta radiation penetrates more deeply, but again, DNA and RNA in internal organs (e.g. bone marrow) is more affected by internal exposure to emitters.
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GRR nooooo!!!
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