Re: Not in their back yard

On Mon, 15 Dec 2008 19:37:36 GMT, Ali Baba
<ali.on_usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


*My* opposition to nuclear energy is based on Windscale,
Not a civil electricity generating reactor, no immediate casualties,
no detectable increase in long term effects in the local population.

Three Mile Island,
major catastrophe - no one killed no one injured.

I'd rather have more "major accidents" with these effects.

Chernobyl.
An unstable reactor design which would never have existed in the west
with a control system no one would have used and a management system
which doesn't exist running an experiment which would never have been
permitted and an untrained night shift which over-rode the automatic
shut-down systems.

It was by any standards an accident of the worst possible sort which
involved reactor meltdown and breached the containment structure. 31
workers died of acute radiation poisoning in the first 3 months, just
over 200 more had acute radiation sickness.

Since 1986 United Nations Scientific Committee of the Effects of
Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) has monitored the health of people in the
surrounding area. The latest estimates are that the number of cancer
deaths attributable to the accident and its aftermath will be less
than 4,000 amongst the 600 000 people having received the greatest
exposure. As of 2004, nearly 20 years after the accident there were
a total of 56 deaths attributable to Chernobyl.

To put this figure into perspective the great smog of London in 1952
killed 12,000. Bhopal killed 18,000. The Banqiao Dam failure killed
231,000. On the ferry MV Doña Paz in 1987 4,000 died.

The 2003 European heat wave killed 48,000, the 2006 one 3,400. The
2008 Afghanistan blizzard killed 1,300 (not that anyone noticed).

The 1968 Hong Kong flu outbreak killed 750,000, Aids about 25 million.
In the last 100 years tuberculosis has finished off 50 to 100 million
people and measles about 200 million more.

As major disasters go the nuclear industry isn't even a bit part
player.
.

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