How fear of nuclear power is hurting the environment

Re:How fear of nuclear power is hurting the environment by dv_dt on Monday October 17, 2016 @12:04PM (#12726300)

> ... Fukushima, where zero people have died or gotten sick due to radiation

No one has died of outright first-order radiation poisoning, but it's a specious claim with respect to long term cancer rates since we lack the tools to pinpoint the cause of a cancer death.

Workers have received high does of radiation, and some models predict hundreds of future cancer deaths (but some models predict zero). Even if someone in the exposed population were to die, we would be very unlikely be able to say for sure if that death were due to 'natural' cancer or cancer induced by exposure to some substance leaked. That doesn't make the exposure or the technology safe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How fear of nuclear power is hurting the environment by antris on Monday October 17, 2016 @12:07PM (#12726331)

Yes you are correct. As I mentioned elsewhere (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12725402), I made that statement under old information. I stand corrected.

But the larger point still stands about nuclear being the safest form of energy we have. Even the worst case scenario of 600 eventual deaths won't sway the numbers for nuclear very much.

My argument isn't that nuclear is 100% safe, I'm just asking for it to be honestly compared to the alternatives.

[ Parent | on HN ]