You’re right, you don’t know! When I worked on a nuclear aircraft carrier, I learned that the people working down in the reactor spaces got significantly less radiation exposure than the people working on the flight deck. My ship was ported in Japan when the Fukushima disaster happened, and we had to abruptly go out to sea because we couldn’t let the (minimal) fallout contaminate the reactor spaces and make it impossible to monitor the reactor itself properly.
> "...we had to abruptly go out to sea because we couldn’t let the (minimal) fallout contaminate the reactor spaces and make it impossible to monitor the reactor itself properly."
There are numerous anecdotes from the USS Reagan that contradict that prosaic interpretation (of the reason it was abruptly moved),
"He was issued iodine tablets—which are used to block radioactive iodine, a common byproduct of uranium fission, from being absorbed by the thyroid gland—and fitted for an NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical) suit. He was also told not to drink water from the ship’s desalination system. [...] Torres, the senior petty officer, recounted, “One of the scariest things I’ve heard in my career was when the commanding officer came over the loudspeaker, and she said, ‘We’ve detected high levels of radiation in the drinking water; I’m securing all the water.’” That included making showers off limits."
