On Chernobyl

The amount of misinformation on this astounding (E. Nymton, anyone?). All of these hysterical assertions that hundreds of thousands of people died as a result of the accident at Chernobyl are all demonstrably false. The fact of the matter is that U.N. Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, the Chernobyl Tissue Bank, and the International Commission on Radiological Protection have all exhaustively analyzed the data and have all concluded thusly: 6,000 young children did develop thyroid cancer (from drinking contaminated milk) but only 15 of them died. 134 emergency workers did get acute radiation sickness but only 28 of these people died in the first month or so. Yes, 19-20 more have died in the subsequent years but it is entirely unclear how many of them died because of Chernobyl. So, there it is, only 43-63 people died because of Chernobyl and a lot of that had to due with drinking contaminated milk and the wholly inadequate equipment of the time that those rescue worker had to work with..............................................................................................Now, this isn't to submit that what happened at Chernobyl and Fukushima (where the casualties will no doubt be significantly less than Chernobyl) were good things. They weren't and we obviously need to tighten things up considerably. But the possibility also exists that the hysteria involved in these two episodes was probably a lot more harmful than the actual accident itself...........................................................................................P.S. We also have to look at the power scale of what each of these respective energy sources can provide. Nuclear, for instance, can provide a shit-load of power and do it from a relatively small piece of real estate. Compare that to wind and ethanol, which both take up massive swaths of land and which neither are really all that green. This is a total no-brainer, I'm thinking.