AndyH said:
GRA said:
<much snippage> However, to dismiss epidemiological results from past mishaps on one hand, while the anti-nuke groups are attributing all sorts of ridiculous levels of injuries/illnesses/deaths (not backed up by the epidemiology) as well as future supposed risks based on those very same past accidents is just a teensy bit dishonest, don't you think? What we know is that even with all the bungling and comparatively unsafe reactor designs that were involved in past accidents, the epidemiology not only from those accidents but also A and H-bomb testing as well as actual use, the risks are still orders of magnitude less to people over the long term than extracting and burning coal. Not infinitesimal risk, which some of the pro-nuke groups have claimed at various times, with equally little basis as the inflated risk claims of the anti-nuke groups. The risks are quantifiable, and while hardly perfect are enough to have a rational discussion of the comparative risk from various technologies.
You pointed out some of the purveyors of inaccurate information, but you missed at least one. One of the very significant problems with a reliance on 'epidemiological results' and other bits of data is that the nuclear industry (both weapons and energy) have been keeping two sets of books from the beginning. We can parse the numbers from the 'public' books but it'll lead us in a very different direction and to a very different cost/benefit point.
Just one example: A neighbor of mine for a time was an MD/PhD biomedical researcher (still a doc; no longer a neighbor). She brought her family to the 'States from Moldova to escape the criminal medical cover-up that continues to plague the countries in E Europe after Chernobyl and because her daughter was showing signs of thyroid issues. It's unfortunately quite correct that the stats show few deaths from the disaster. That's only because kids dying of strange cancers have 'cancer' listed as the cause of death, not 'nuclear power.'
According to various whistle blowers, the US nuclear industry's been doing this since the beginning of the nuclear age. Japan's restricting the press and doctors since shortly after Fukushima as well.
Until we can gain access to the full data sets, we cannot judge which form of generation is 'better' or 'worse.'
The organization doing the epidemiological work post Chernobyl was the WHO through UNSCEAR. As it happens, the Ukrainians and Russians agreed to have an American scientist head the project, as they both trusted him but not each other to be objective. The scientists involved were from many countries. Here:
http://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Feel free to provide peer-reviewed evidence of such a coverup, Andy.
As to other causes of death, yeah, there are a lot of them in the FSU, where what limited environmental and occupational health laws existed were ignored whenever it was expedient (which is to say, routinely), and that's before you even consider that Russian males, in particular, are attempting to drink and smoke themselves to death in large numbers.
A couple of decades ago, I had to take an English class and, looking for some easy credits, chose one because the instructor had been a dual English/Environmental Studies major, and I'd already read most of the books on the reading list, e.g. Walden, Silent Spring, etc. For a final we had to write a paper on some environmental disaster, and rather than doing one on the usual suspects (Chernobyl, TMI, Bhopal, Exxon Valdez etc.) I wanted to go further afield. Fortunately, the college library had a subscription to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and this was the early '90s when a lot of Soviet scientists involved in their weapons program were starting to talk about their work, which often appeared in the BAS. One incident in particular, which became known as the Kyshtym disaster (and which mirrored concerns about the possibility of a similar accident at Hanford: Chelyabinsk-40 was the Soviet equivalent, plutonium-production reactors for weapons) interested me, so I decided to do the paper describing that accident as well as the general (lack of) safety and environmental practices in the area. If you're not familiar with the accident, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyshtym_disaster" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
That article mentions that contaminated water was discharged directly into Lake Kyzyltash; what it doesn't mention (but the BAS articles did) is that at one point, anyone standing on the shore of the lake would receive a lethal dose of radiation in about an hour, and that the lake regularly dried up and the winds would blow silt over a wide area. Chernobyl was bad but it was hardly an aberration, nor was it the sole source of environmental hazard in the FSU, the lands of which were and remain a toxic sewer from numerous sources.
:lol:
