We should stop running away from radiation

Having grown up in Russia and personally being in contact with a few people affected by the Chernobyl fallout, it's a bit hard to take someone who tries to diminish the impact of that accident to this degree.<p>Yes, maybe the UN report showed such a small number of confirmed fatalities, but I have a sneaky suspicion that they based it mostly on data collected by the Soviet Union. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't trust any data that came from an authoritarian government, especially one run by a bunch of Russians, especially one that collapsed 20 years ago (likely destroying countless incriminating documents in the process), especially concerning a deeply embarrassing incident such as Chernobyl.<p>The public may be overreacting to the nuclear threat posed by the Fukushima reactors, but this seems like a subtle attempt at rewriting history.<p>(I wouldn't be surprised if there is a UN report 20 years from now proving that Saddam Hussein did indeed win re-election with 99% of the vote.)

The idea that we have a sufficient quantity of accurate data about Chernobyl to make sweeping claims about its impact on people living there, including how many died as a result, is frankly idiotic. We do not and never will have such data.<p>This is a pernicious meme that frequently recurs on this board. Reject it.<p>(The Fukushima disaster, on the other hand, has occurred in the open within the context of a reasonably free society, so it may provide us with data that proves useful for future nuclear accidents.)

People are worried about cancer from electricity, phones, microwaves, terrorists, etc. Silent/Unseen killers are the scariest kind, almost as if it's a good bogeyman.<p>Japanese can resolve this hysteria after seeing economic costs. However, the governments in lawsuit prone countries will go out of their way to make it very safe in almost everything. eg low speed limits, many speed bumps, background checks, etc. Otherwise the government would get sued for not doing enough, affecting the budget.<p>Educational Video of Japanese Nuclear Boy for kids <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sakN2hSVxA" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sakN2hSVxA</a>

The author points out the solution for storing nuclear end products, its quite brilliant! 100m under a pro-nuclear persons house! Problem solved!<p>Maybe those who think nuclear energy is very green might join the author? I am sure we can find a few 10,000, and then we have room for all that nuclear waste.<p>The media overhyping things is nothing new and doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean nuclear power is safe, for example. Unfortunately, real journalism has all but disappeared from the world, to be replaced by what we'd refer to as trolling or link-whoring online.

Good luck. The media (and people in general) are horrible when it comes to technical things and scary invisible things. Nuclear is both.

I'd recommend The Oil Drum - <a href="http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7706#comments_top" rel="nofollow">http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7706#comments_top</a><p>There seem to be a small group of people who want to play the contrarian game and claim that people are overreacting to the potentially huge damage the contamination (as opposed to radiation) that Fukushima is going to result in.<p>It's easy to be holed up safe in Oxford and claim radiation is not an issue. Why doesn't this gentleman volunteer to assist at the plants if he thinks radiation is no danger at all.

Who is "we"? If the the author speaks for himself, I have no objection against him moving to Fukushima or buying a house close to another nuclear power plant. I'm sure there are people willing to sell and the price for real estate in those areas has most likely dropped considerably in the last few decades.

What makes me uneasy about this kind of call is that the situation at Fukushima is ungoing, but we hear a lot of "the levels are ridiculous <i>right now</i>, what you're scarred of?".<p>The people running away or worrying about the situation don't care so much about the levels now. They care about the levels if/when shit happens, and only use the radiation seen now to check how good things are handled. And for now it's not as if tepco's engineers, as goog as they are, are yet mastering the situation.

Lets talk money.<p>I think it is only reasonable to ask that avoidable civilian technology be insured against harm done by it. So: how much would this insurance cost? Cleanup, health care costs, disability payments, loss of property?<p>Given just a slight increase in illness rate for the sheer number of people involved can give a hard to detect but significant cost. An insurer will have to set aside enough money for the expected amount of payout. What would Warren Buffett's premiums be? Some claims will be excluded by the insurer, and the rest of the population will probably be called to for economic assistance: how much will that be? What is the opportunity cost of having half a million people cleaning up the place instead of being productive?<p>Feel free to peruse the [IAEA report about Chernobyl](<a href="http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Booklets/Chernobyl/chernobyl.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Booklets/Chernobyl/chernoby...</a>). What is the total economic cost? Maybe "hundreds of billions of dollars"? See the report for estimates.<p>So yes, we shouldn't run away from radiation. We should clean it up safely, then come to our senses and stop dispersing any more of it. This technology is a dead-end for normal energy production.

A 'spokesman' has just announced in the last few hours that there are high cesium levels in leaking water that is measuring 1Sv per hour. That going to be somewhere in the depths of the plant, but living about as far away from this ad is possible is a comfort to me.

I've seen a similar titled article about the Fukoshima plant on HN called: "Why I am not worried about Japan’s nuclear reactors."

How about all those people dying from cancer years later all over Russia and Central Europe? Radiation does not kill instantly, it causes cancer, which kills years later.<p>Stop spreading such nonsense articles, please! Just because the immediate impact is comparatively low, that doesn't mean it's harmless.

Radiation has the ability to make entire areas uninhabitable for the foreseeable future. Any mistakes in small countries like the UK could result in devastating effects on available land. Anything that dangerous should be handled exceptionally carefully.

Often the argument about whether nuclear power represents an acceptable risk or not is then used to argue that nuclear power is a key solution to get rid of fossil fuel (a straw man argument?), as if there are no other parts of nuclear power which should be questioned.<p>This particular article doesn't say so explicitly, but has links in the margin to: "Nuclear power: Energy solution or evil curse?" <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12730473" rel="nofollow">http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12730473</a><p>Key aspects of the discussion really is whether nuclear power is safe (for people and environment) and economical. A good discussion about the economic aspects can be found at: "Cost, not Japan crisis, should scrub nuclear power" <a href="http://www.grist.org/article/2011-03-17-cost-not-japan-crisis-should-scrub-nuclear-power" rel="nofollow">http://www.grist.org/article/2011-03-17-cost-not-japan-crisi...</a>

I highly recommend the Battle of Chernobyl documentary. It's available in parts on YouTube.<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv3a4LXi_qc" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv3a4LXi_qc</a>

Uninformed idiots downplaying the issue just to stand out from the crowd, it's sickening.

Stopped reading at "more people have died from the Tsunami", which unfortunately was line one. if you want to make an argument about radiation, make it - Tsunamis have nothing to do with it, I don't think they are radioactive.

the moron who wrote the article doesn't know what he's talking about:<p>&#62;Nuclear technology cures countless cancer patients every day - and a radiation dose given for radiotherapy in hospital is no different in principle to a similar dose received in the environment.<p>From <a href="http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/coping/radiation-therapy-and-you/page6" rel="nofollow">http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/coping/radiation-therapy-...</a> :<p>"Late side effects may first occur 6 or more months after radiation therapy is over. They vary by the part of your body that was treated and the dose of radiation you received. Late side effects may include infertility, joint problems, lymphedema, mouth problems, and secondary cancer."

I am going to make a completely unscientific argument now that I know the HN readership will look down upon, but I think it captures why we can't build nuclear plants.<p>First, nuclear power started out as a cold war thing; they built nuclear plants because of one very interesting side-product required to build nuclear bombs. These days in those countries that already have nuclear weapons, that's a secondary concern - but this is where it came from. And for countries that don't yet have nuclear weapons, that's the reason they want to build them.<p>Second, the accident in Chernobyl. Hold your statistics and studies. Just pause for a moment. Think about this accident. All children all over Europe were told to stay inside for a few days. And take Iodine. Any technology that is able to cause that is not fit to generate power. In fact the only man made processes that can cause such an event are nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants.<p>Fail safe plants unfortunately don't exist - they're not fail safe, as evident in Fukushima. Does the chain reaction stop when everything fails? No? Then it's not fail-safe. Obviously.<p>I am not a worrier - but when you're playing with forces that cannot be controlled with the technology we have, you have to do the smart thing and skip them for now. There's plenty of alternatives - I think the nuclear thing is a distraction from them, and kept alive by a very active lobby.<p>I am happy to change my opinion if you come up with a new process that's actually fail-safe, that's actually guaranteed to not leak radiation, and that doesn't produce nuclear waste.