@fact not fiction
It’s fundamentally unfair to claim that more people die of air pollution (in a given time) from coal power plants than have died in all nuclear accidents. The *direct* deaths of nuclear power are being compared to the *indirect* deaths caused by air pollution. What must be compared is the direct deaths of nuclear vs the direct deaths caused by coal (which is much, much lower than air pollution). Or compare the indirect deaths of nuclear power to the indirect deaths of coal burning, e.g. air pollution.
Air pollution can be seen and anyone who is concerned about it can avoid it by staying inside or wear an air filter mask.
Nuclear radiation is insidious and is in every living thing. The teeth of animals can be used to determine the age because the radionuclides were replacing the calcium not long after the first atomic bombs were tested and their fallout was released into the atmosphere, to be blown all over the Earth and end up in the cow’s milk, which was consumed by everyone. You like radioactive cheese or yogurt? The same radionuclides were released after the accidents in the nuclear power plants.
There are statistics for the morbidity and mortality of these radionuclides just like for air pollution. These must also be counted in the death toll just like with air pollution. Fair is fair!
The company that is cleaning up Fukushima Daiichi is drilling holes in the ground around the power plants and freezing the ground to form an ice barrier around it to prevent radioactive water from going into the land and sea. They’re not doing this for no reason! They’re trying to stop radioactive contamination from leaving the area and going into the environment. This cleanup is costing hundreds of billions of dollars US.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_disaster_cleanup
Quote from comment to Undecided’s YouTube video about SMR reactors – the links give statistics.
<< fact not fiction
@CubbyTech Thousands did not die from the accidents at Chernobyl and Fukushima.
Chernobyl No. 4 accident
* 62 dead (47 from ARS, ~30 immediately the rest in 6 months and 15 from thyroid cancer)
* 4-9000 will have shorter lives (not dead, but will die earlier) – UNSCEAR report * 11,000 total cancers predicted – IARC report
* 1800 diagnosed with thyroid cancer (but living, and will likely live fairly normal lifespans) ** data unclear on how many cases due to the accident, vs background
* incidence of eye cataracts in liquidators is slightly higher than background population
At this point in 2020, 34 years have passed since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster – at this point all radioactive iodine is gone, and cesium-137, strontium-90, etc, are halved (i.e. one half-life for these isotopes is over).
If there are more dead or sick people – then there should be more death certificates, more graves, and higher incidences of cancer diagnoses, etc – and there are not
Fukushima Daiichi accident
* 2 workers drowned in tsunami
* 573-2000 died in pointless evacuation
http://www.unscear.org/
https://www.iarc.fr/media-centre/media-centre-iarc-news-chernobyl-30years/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0957582017300782
https://ourworldindata.org/what-was-the-death-toll -from-chernobyl-and-fukushima
These accidents were tragic, but still:
https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources of-energy
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