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Re:2015 “smashed” 2014’s global temperature record by pdkl95 on Wednesday January 20, 2016 @09:11PM (#10942915)
> There is still a lot of that material

I never said there wasn't. The cleanup is ongoing and will take a very long time, but it still isn't "destroyed for good". At least the caesium eventually goes away. The Pb, Hg, and As in the 1.1 billion gallons of fly ash slurry that the Tennessee Valley Authority spilled[0] over homes and into the Emory and Clinch rivers doesn't have a half life.

> economy and agriculture

The tsunami also did incredible damage to the economy and agriculture of Japan.

> Can you claim without flinching that this will never ever happen?

Absolutely. Even the idiotic RBMK design can be run safely after being modified to fix the void coefficient. I suggest actually reading my link[1] above, which explain in great detail the problems in the design of that reactor. Even with those problems, it took incredible effort[2] to trigger the steam explosion.

> 'heroes of Chernobyl'

I'm give a lot of respect and thanks to those that had to deal with Chernobyl's immediate aftermath and the 600,000 liquidators that were part of the cleanup afterwords. In particular, the 3828 people that cleaned up the worst section of roof in two minute shifts. Their story - in their own words[3] - is something I will never forget.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly...

[1] http://www.hiroshimasyndrome.com/chernobyl.html

[2] https://leatherbarrowa.exposure.co/chernobyl

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfDa8tR25dk

Re:2015 “smashed” 2014’s global temperature record by MichaelMoser123 on Wednesday January 20, 2016 @09:59PM (#10943066)
Tsunami and coal dusts are less severe than radiation hazards. I think this comparison is deliberately misleading.
Re:2015 “smashed” 2014’s global temperature record by pdkl95 on Thursday January 21, 2016 @02:10AM (#10943815)
You're going to have to show some proof for this claim, because you seem to have the risk assessment backwards.

> Tsunami

The tsunami in Japan killed over 15,000 people (with several thousand more missing, likely dead). Radiation from Fukushima Daiichi (or anywhere else) hasn't killed anybody yet, though a handful of unfortunate workers and others in the immediate vicinity may have cancer problems in the future. Hopefully those cases will be treatable, but we won't know for some time.

15,000+ dead seems to indicate some tsunamis are far more dangerous than nuclear power.

> coal dusts

You might want to look again at the contents of fly ash. It's radioactive, full of a long list of heavy metals, with trace amounts of nasty things like dioxins.

Re:2015 “smashed” 2014’s global temperature record by voronoff on Thursday January 21, 2016 @02:19AM (#10943855)
Why? The tsunami killed more people than the radiation is estimated to even with the most generous estimates of how many people will get sick from radiation. Hell, even the stress/evacuation caused by the worry of radiation is likely to kill more people than the radiation itself would have if they didn't take those steps.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/22/science/when-radiation-isn...