I saw something recently that talked about military personnel on a ship off the coast of Japan getting the equivalent of one month of background radiation in a few hours by being NEAR a radioactive site.
Then the reporter followed it up with a statement about them being OK after they were scrubbed down.
I think they're mixing two completely different things. I worked at a nuclear plant. When you went into the Radiologically Controlled Area (RCA) you dressed in a yellow jumpsuit with a hood, booties, googles and latex gloves. Your gloves overlapped your sleeves and were taped with masking tape. Likewise for your boots.
All of this gear was purely for what is called "surface contamination". Essentially, radioactive dust that ends up on things due to maintenance in the RCA and containment.
In addition to the protective gear for what amounts to radioactive dust, you also carry two dose meters. One is an electronic device that looks like a beeper that measures radioactive particles shooting though your body, the other is more of a long-term dose meter that records overall exposure for many months at a time.
I was UNDER the reactor vessel one time assisting a technician from Westinghouse replacing some sensor modules. We were standing behind thick concrete walls as much as possible to block the radiation and limit our exposure. I was running in and giving him tools, then running back out of the room. There was a limit to how much radiation exposure you could get in one day. I think I hit the daily limit in about 20 minutes. The guy from Westinghouse, on the other hand, got enough dosage in that one day that he wasn't allowed into the RCA again for a whole year. Neither of us needed to be "scrubbed down" because we didn't come in contact with "surface contamination".
The bottom line is that it's possible to get giant doses of radiation without actually becoming "contaminated" with radioactive dust. It's also possible to get extremely contaminated with radioactive dust to the point where they have to strip you down and scrub your skin because it got into your pores without getting a large radiation dose.
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