Wednesday, March 27, 2013

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.

5 comments:

dmarks said...

Misinformation is Ema's game. Remember her on how great and democratic Egypt's dictator is? The same man who said he wants to destroy all Jews and sics rape gangs on pro-democracy protesters?

Ema Nymton said...

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So. How many people are you willing to have die for the sake of nuclear industry profit? Will this number change when the children are yours?

"Compare that to wind and ethanol, ..."

Yes. Let us compare.

When wind and ethanol production sites have accidents, how many thousands of children will die, and how much land will become uninhabitable?

"This is a total no-brainer, I'm thinking." If this is an example of Wiley E. Coyote's 'thinking', maybe Wiley needs to go back to the drawing board. Beep. Beep.

Ema Nymton
~ @ : o ?
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Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

Ema, you haven't thought this one through. Chernobyl killed 63 people in total. You know how many people die every year from coal fired plants? It's in the thousands. And how do you think that they make these windmills (easily the most resource intensive of ALL the energy sources)? By magic? They make them with coal fired energy. AND, being that windmills are inefficient and always need a coal fired back-up, it's even worse that that when you add it all up.......Dude, do you know who George Monbiot is? He just happens to be the most left leaning environmentalist in all of England and even he's frigging come around on this. Maybe you ought to do some real research and stop watching the damned "China Syndrome".

Ema Nymton said...

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"Chernobyl killed 63 people in total."

Do you think your callous indifference to the well-being of 'other' peoples would be affected if your neighbors or your family members were on being killed?

Ema Nymton
~@:o?
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Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

You missed the point, Ema. Coal kills far more people than nuclear and wind is extremely dependent on coal. Focus!