Nuclear Accident Casuality Figures

What are the real casualty figures for the nuclear accidents we have had so far? Can we trust the official figures produced? Or should we trust the anti-nuclear lobby instead?

Will Fukishima cause 1 million deaths? Has Fukishima already caused over 14,000 deaths in the USA as recently claimed?

Or have there been no radiation deaths caused by Fukishima?

Did Chernobyl cause 1 million deaths as claimed by the same people making the Fukishima claims?

Or were there less than 100 fatalities as found by the International committe that
evaluated the disaster?

How can we at least, get a feel for ourselves as to what the real consequences have been?

Fukishima is a recent event, so whatever claim is made and however outlandish it is, the recency of the event obscures any clear decision in the short term.

With Chernobyl, the poor Soviet era health and social care and the consequent closer monitoring of public health post Chernobyl also obfuscates the situation. It allows those with an agenda (whatever it is) to muddy the waters.

Also, we have to contend with those who fervently believe that there has been a grand conspiracy to hide the true casualty figures from Chernobyl.

To me, this proposed suppression of the "truth"  sounds exactly like the type of paranoia you get with a bad case of climate science denial. Why an international committee of world renowned experts would seek to hide the truth and fake the casualty figures is beyond me.

But there is greater clarity surrounding Windscale fire in 1957. The Windscale fire was the world's worst nuclear accident before Chernobyl. Even today is still ranked at number three.

Next post I will be looking at the 1957 Windscale fire - and I'll go looking for the bodies.

If the lurid claims for Chernobyl and Fukishima are correct, there must be hundreds of thousands of them.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ok so are you for nuclear or against nuclear?

BilloTheWisp said...

I am for nuclear. I am also against denialism.

Denialism twists the science to fit the politics.

This applies to climate change as well as the anti-nuclear movement.

Mindlessly denying the science of climate change by basing your arguments on a mixture of wishful thinking and paranioa is much akin to opposing Nuclear power for similar false reasons.

The next post (just published) explores this a little more.