In article , "Dee D. Flint"
writes:

Only 31 people died from Chernobyl. Even now there has been
no increased incident of deaths from diseases that may possibly be linked to
radiation.

Directly attributed deaths. If a pregnant woman 1000 miles away was exposed to
high levels of windblown radiation, and her child developed leukemia at age 2
and died as a direct result of that exposure, how does that death ever get
attributed to the Chernobyl accident?

The area where the fallout could be discerned from the normal
background measurements was relatively small.

How many square miles? How long will it be hot?

In addition, that accident
was due to an unauthorized experiment being conducted at the facility. In
other words, rules and safety precautions were being deliberately ignored.

Yep. Absolutely true. And I've never seen any reason given.

But these were not stupid, evil or suicidal people. They just did some
amazingly dumb things, which got out of their control. And perhaps that's the
real lesson of Chernobyl: People will do amazingly stupid things for no
explainable reason at all. Then the rest of us are left to pick up the pieces.


But when technology is small and distributed, the effects of doing amazingly
stupid things for no explainable reason at all are contained to a relatively
small area and numbers of people. When technology is huge and concentrated, the
effects can be much worse.

And the more complex the technology, the easier it is to do something really
dumb.

Nuclear power generation has been round for 50 years now. A total of 34
people have died. That's the 31 at Chernobyl and 3 in the 1950s at an
experimental government facility (where once again regulations were not
followed).

Attributable deaths.

The collapse of hydroelectric dams have affected areas as wide or wider than
a nuclear power plant accident. And they have killed more people. I'd much
rather live next to a nuclear plant than downstream of a dam.

When is the last time a hydro dam in the USA collapsed and killed people?

And speaking of long term environmental impacts, what about thousands of
square miles that are supposedly affected by acid rain from burning coal??
What about the miles of coast and ocean that have been contaminated by oil
spills?? The long term effects could be quite significant.

Sure. But not as significant as the effects of radioactive materials that take
millennia to break down.

Consider just one spent fuel rod from a nuke plant like TMI. How long before it
is harmless?

So if an honest evaluation and comparison of long term effects, deaths,
environmental impacts, etc is done and the same standards applied across the
board, then it would indeed be necessary to shut down all oil, coal, and
hydroelectric plants.

I'd like to see such a comparison.

Personally I don't care to sit in the dark and
shiver.

It's not a binary problem.

Now let's take a look at serious industrial accidents. A prime example is
the chemical plant in Bhopal. 3,000 people died immediately when that
happened. As many as 10,000 people have died from long term effects of
exposure to the gas released since it damaged their lungs and other organs.
No one is shutting down the chemical industry.

The chemical industry in India does not have anywhere near the safeguards of
the chemical industry in the USA.

And as horrible as the Bhopal disaster was, the gas dispersed and will break
down. How long will TMI be radioactive?

Yet some chemicals are as
persistent in the environment as nuclear materials.

Some examples, please?

A process can be developed to break down any chemical compound. PCBs, for
example, were specifically designed to be inert and nonreactive, yet they can
be broken down into their components quickly. But there's no way to speed up
nuclear decay.

So sorry to say, your long term environmental arguments just don't hold
water. There's lots of things that can affect even wider spread areas and
last just as long.

Perhaps we should discuss the half life of plutonium?

And if you're going to discuss dangerous industrial processes, consider this:
The most dangerous common form of mechanized transportation in use today in the
USA are privately owned motor vehicles. Every year and a half, about as many
Americans die on US highways as died in the entire Vietnam war. Airlines,
trains, buses and ships are far safer, yet few people refuse to drive or ride
in a car compared to other modes. Why?

73 de Jim, N2EY