A contaminant in the soil where people live? Where Stan lives?
Yeppers.
I think I might know this one so I won’t guess. If its what I’m thinking of I was actually in the town at the time where it happened. I’d mention the town but that in and of itself might count as a clue. I think its a good one but may be a bit tricky.
I guess I can ask this safely irrelevant question to confirm my suspicions.
Did the alarm go off on January 16?
hmm, it happened a lot earlier than I thought that it was when I came home for the summer from collgee or grad school, but it turns out it happened when I was in middle school. I guess my memory is corrupted.
I have absolutely no idea.
OK, I looked it up. It was in December of the year it happened. Irrelevant, but true.
Actaully, looking back I see you ruled out construction materials to that rules out what I was thinking of when after making a wrong turn into secured facility a truck load of radioactive rebar set of radation detectors in my home town of Los Alamos New Mexico. Jan 16th 1984
Hey, folks, I think you have enough information to figure this out. Put a summary together and I swear the answer will be obvious.
Note to self finish reading the whole thread before posting 
as things have advanced way away from my scenario.
Was the radioactive soil evidence of a leak in nuclear containment?
Nope.
Was the source of the radiation in the soil natural?
Was determining the source of the radiation what saved so many people?
Were radioactive vegetables being produced in the soil?
Radiation…in the soil…discovered in a radiation test at an unfinished nuclear power plant. Consequently saved many thousands of lives…
I’ll post the answer soon, but come on. Someone should blurt out the only missing piece here!
Is all that we are missing is that people were living over a naturally occurring radiation deposit and so had to move?
Because that seems incompatible with either the town not being evacuated or with more than the neighbors being affected.
Did finding a new source or radioactive ore allow people to make something that saved lives?
Since the soil was radioactive did that contaminate the drinking water and fixing that is what saved so many people?
Would the natural radiation have interfered with the reactor?
Maybe cause the reactions to happen too quickly?
Answer:
It was Radon and the discover of Radon leaking into people’s homes and how dangerous that was saved countless lives. This is all a true story. It was discovered when a construction engineer set the radiation alarm off and they realized he had a ton of radiation. The Radon in his home was like smoking 100 packs of cigarettes a day.
She was a star, sort of. People were really excited for her when she was discovered. Soon, however, a new term was coined, and she was doomed to relative obscurity. How disappointing.
Many years later, another new term was coined, for very similar reasons, disappointing fans of another like herself. Now even schoolchildren know her name. Why this strange arc of fame?
Pluto?
Is “she” human?
If not human – an animal? An inanimate object?
Does “star” mean an astronomical object? A famous individual? A geometrical shape? Something else?
Nova and supernova?
I thought I’d put in enough misdirection, but we’re almost there already. Y’all are smart.
It was good Mahaloth just got off to a good start by thinking of pluto in on the disappointing renaming,.
I’m thinking Ceres since it matches that history. Named for a goddess so it matches the gender. Discovered to great fanfare, but then called an asteroid as part of the asteroid belt. Then renamed a dwarf planet like the disappointing pluto. but I’m not sure of the final school children connection. Does anyone know if there is something like a series of teaching materials named Ceres?