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Re:Nuclear should be considered part of clean energy standar... by kragen on Friday April 02, 2021 @09:39PM (#26677725)
> Direct deaths due to Chernobyl are in the order of 60 people. Long term impact on deaths is very unclear and estimations are contested ... the Bhopal gas disaster directly killed thousands of people and harmed half a million. Much more devastating

100, not 60, and while it's true that the long-term deaths from Chernobyl are "contested", the controversy is about whether only 4000 people have died from it so far, or more like 60,000 people. 350,000 people lost their homes.

In Bhopal, by comparison, the official death toll was 2259, but other estimates go as high as 16000. More to the point, though, almost 2 million people still live in Bhopal, more than before the disaster. Nobody lives in Pripyat now. Before the disaster 14000 people lived in Chernobyl itself; now 1000 people live there—state employees with short tours of duty, whose job it is to keep everybody else out of the Exclusion Zone except for brief, strictly monitored visits.

I don't think this supports a judgment that the Bhopal disaster—the worst such accident so far, despite the existence of many more pesticide plants and similar facilities than nuclear power plants—was "much more devastating".

But the whole safety debate is a moot point, since solar energy is so much cheaper than nuclear now that nuclear will be relegated to niche roles for decades.

Re:Nuclear should be considered part of clean energy standar... by effie on Sunday April 11, 2021 @04:19PM (#26773049)
Immediate damage on lives was much bigger with Bhopal, long-term it is hard to say and let's not pretend we can analyze it here. It is hard to compare long-term effects between Ukraine and India and how much those effects were due to disasters and how much due to botched response. Different political system, population density and moving options for people.

My point is accidents other than nuclear with similar death counts do happen, thousands or tens of thousands people die or have to relocate. Natural disasters happen too - the tsunami responsible for Fukushima disaster killed 15000 people.

These kinds of disasters are immense and bad, but the damages are quite contained and can't dictate energy policy all around the world. The existence and non-preventability of similary big natural disasters shows that the narrative about nuclear energy being too dangerous is unsubstantiated. Chernobyl disaster is a lesson, but it is quite limited in scope - it is about pitfalls of soviet-like safety-neglecting attitudes, putting people who do not know how the reactor works in charge. Much less on dangers of nuclear energy.