Dean Esmay links to the Ukrainain biker who’s posted photos of her trips through Chernobyl.
Fascinating stuff.
And yet there is one point that should not be allowed to stand as is.
She estimates that the death toll is in the 300,000 – 400,000 range. And a number of environmental organisations support those numbers.
Looking at the real numbers is rather different.
There were the 31 people who died during or a week or two after the accident ( 28 from radiation poisoning, two from physical accident at the site and one from a heart attack ) and there has most definately been a rise in childhood thyroid cancers : Something one would expect from a release of radioactive Iodine.
This

report from the UNDP is most interesting : stating that the major health problem in the affected areas is in fact iodine deficiency, causing goitre and cretinism. This is nothing to do with radiation or Chernobyl. It was pre existent to the accident, and is in fact easily cured by compulsory iodising of table salt. Something that we already do in most countries, and something that UNDP is trying to get the various countries affected by Chernobyl to do.

This is also interesting, but the figures come from the Nuclear Industry Associsation. Some would not regard this as an impartial source. Fair enough.

This is the International Atomic Energy Authority site on the subject. They are impartial.
They report 1,800 cases of thyroid cancer amongst the 18 million people exposed . A treatable disease, they don’t report the death rate but others put it at somewhere in the low 10’s. 20 – 30 perhaps.

One can also note that total radiation emissions from the plant were in fact 20 times less than the emissions from the atmospheric bomb tests from 1945 to 1963.

The problem with all of these numbers is that dependent upon who you believe one can state either that nuclear power is such a dangerous thing that we should ban it, or that it is so safe that we should embrace it as the solution to global warming and fossil fuel depletion ( if in fact either of those things are going on).

Running on the numbers of the impartial international bureaucracies, whose words and pronouncements we are enjoined to heed on other subjects, like GW itself, it would appear that nuclear is the best option. Even the worst nuclear industry accident yet led to fewer deaths than producing the same amount of energy from coal would. And I wonder what the death rate is going to be for construction workers on those offshore wind farms ?

I’m also reminded of the Three Mile Island Accident. The follow up surveys showed that there was indeed an increase of cancer in the areas around the plant. But the increase was equal in those areas that had been irradiated and in those that had not. As the researchers dryly noted, those in the area had been subjected to stress by those claiming future mass dieoffs. And stress is a vector for cancer.

As a personal thing I have no problem with someone stating that we should not use nuclear. Just as I have no problem with the promotion of wind, or solar, or coal or gas. All I want is that the discussion, the debate, be undertaken with the correct numbers. To that end it needs to be pointed out repeatedly, that Chernobyl did not kill hundreds of thousands. Not even hundreds.