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Re:Fukushima by pjc50 on Tuesday September 22, 2015 @10:54AM (#10258948)
The problem which nuclear disasters have that almost all other disasters don't is the permanence of danger over such a large area. There have been plenty of large-scale chemical or industrial disasters - everything from Bhopal to Tianjing to Agent Orange to Deepwater Horizon - but they have the common property that the smoke clears and it's possible to neutralise, disperse or otherwise clean up the mess. Whereas Chernobyl and Fukushima are going to have exclusion zones that must remain covered for our entire lifetimes.
Re:Fukushima by saalweachter on Tuesday September 22, 2015 @12:11PM (#10259529)
Underground coal fires like the one under Centralia, PA -- which has forced a similar evacuation -- also last hundreds of years.

Sea level rise will last thousands.

The destruction of aquifers in central California -- when too much water is pumped out, the porous layers compress, and will no longer hold water in the future -- I don't even know if there's a process by which that will heal.

The loss of diversity of ocean and land life, you're probably looking at millions of years for new speciation to fill the emptied niches.

Ocean acidification, also another long wait.

Re:Fukushima by danharaj on Tuesday September 22, 2015 @11:32AM (#10259230)
Then again, humans have also done things like contaminate our soil with arsenic, and the effects exist to this day and will persist for a very long time.