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Disclosure: I am and have long been very pro nuclear power. My wife lived near Chojniki, Belarus, for a number of months in 1996. I skimmed the WHO evaluation

Disclosure: I am and have long been very pro nuclear power. My wife lived near Chojniki, Belarus, for a number of months in 1996. I skimmed the WHO evaluation you linked, and, unless it has some context I'm not aware of, it just doesn't jive with the actual impact, on the ground, near Chernobyl. A quick link: http://www.businessinsider.com/birth-defects-related-to-chernobyl-2016-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/birth-defects-related-to-cher... From that article: "A study by UNICEF suggested that more than 20% of adolescent children in Belarus suffer from disabilities caused by birth defects." In her time there, 10 years after the disaster, she witnessed many gross birth defects in children, and very many cancers in children and adults. I hesitate to bring anecdotes up as anything like a refutation to a formal and proper report from the WHO, but it's clear that something is missing. I'd like to note that, in terms of acute human exposure, there's no comparison between Fukushima and Chernobyl. > Also, the health impact of fairly low radiation dosages is effectively unknown to date, but data from the Chernobyl incident keeps correcting the effect downward every 10 years. Citation needed, though you did mention 'low radiation doses'. That's the thing: a whole lot of people received a pretty stiff dose from Chernobyl. Perhaps the health impact of low doses isn't well understood, but that's not the case with much higher doses.

mpweiher 10y ago
> WHO report doesn't agree with actual impact Hmm...so you think the WHO report is lying? Or did you misread it? > Business-insider Hmm...this is the first paragraph of that Business Insider article: "The scientific debate is ongoing over whether congenital birth defects can be linked to radiation from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster that happened 30 years ago this month." So on the one hand you have the WHO saying something backed by 30 years of observation and analysis of the data, and you contradict that with a Business Insider article saying "we don't know". I think that one thing you are missing is that radiation is not the only or even primary cause of birth defects or cancer. This is one of the things the WHO reports dig into. For example, roughly and from memory, the economic/psycho-social situation brought on a strong increase in alcoholism, which increases the chance of cancer and birth defects. So once again, saying that the mental health problems exceed the (direct) radiation problems is no way of saying that there are no problem. It is saying that the mental health problems were sometimes severe and in any case exceeded the problems directly attributable to radiation. > Citation needed, though you did mention 'low radiation doses'. The WHO site has reports roughly every ten years after the accident. Each time they downgrade the estimate for radiation effects. Once again, that does not mean there are no radiation effects. I have other references in my other comments. Also, yes, this is for low dosages. If you were in the crew that went into the reactor core you were a walking corpse, immediately.

mpweiher 10y ago

> WHO report doesn't agree with actual impact Hmm...so you think the WHO report is lying? Or did you misread it? > Business-insider Hmm...this is the first paragraph of that Business Insider article: "The scientific debate is ongoing over whether congenital birth defects can be linked to radiation from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster that happened 30 years ago this month." So on the one hand you have the WHO saying something backed by 30 years of observation and analysis of the data, and you contradict that with a Business Insider article saying "we don't know". I think that one thing you are missing is that radiation is not the only or even primary cause of birth defects or cancer. This is one of the things the WHO reports dig into. For example, roughly and from memory, the economic/psycho-social situation brought on a strong increase in alcoholism, which increases the chance of cancer and birth defects. So once again, saying that the mental health problems exceed the (direct) radiation problems is no way of saying that there are no problem. It is saying that the mental health problems were sometimes severe and in any case exceeded the problems directly attributable to radiation. > Citation needed, though you did mention 'low radiation doses'. The WHO site has reports roughly every ten years after the accident. Each time they downgrade the estimate for radiation effects. Once again, that does not mean there are no radiation effects. I have other references in my other comments. Also, yes, this is for low dosages. If you were in the crew that went into the reactor core you were a walking corpse, immediately.