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You have to be very careful about these studies, because most official government studies flat out lie about the effects of nuclear disasters. The most egregio

You have to be very careful about these studies, because most official government studies flat out lie about the effects of nuclear disasters. The most egregious example is Chernobyl, where the official Soviet position was that only a single person died from the disaster. But studies from other nations say the death toll may be close to one million. Well believe it or not a lot of these studies that show how safe nuclear is actually take the official Soviet data about chernobyl as truth. (I am not sure whether this is the case for this particular study because their source is behind a paywall). But similar (if not as outrageous) lies have also been said about accidents in the west. The official story about three mile island for example is that it caused no deaths, yet studies find drastic increases of all kinds of cancers in the affected area. See, for example, https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/27/cancer-and-infant-mortality-at-three-mile-island/ https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/27/cancer-and-infant-mo... I usually believe that we should be guided by science and data in our public decisions, but the data surrounding nuclear is so distorted by governments that it is just not to be trusted. And now that we have truly safe alternatives like solar and wind, we can finally put that nightmare behind us.

mpweiher 9y ago
> You have to be very careful about these studies Yes you do. The WHO has been following the Chernobyl consequences, and come out with a new report about every decade. Each report dramatically lowers the estimate of deaths and other health consequences. As a matter of fact, the largest health effects now are psychosocial effects. That is, fear of and (over-)reaction to the radiation effects is causing more actual harm than the radiation itself. So potentially one of the easiest ways to mitigate the harmful effects of nuclear accidents (best of course: let's not have any!) is to (over-)react less. Of course not reacting at all would also be wrong, but it looks like the balance today is out of whack.

mpweiher 9y ago

> You have to be very careful about these studies Yes you do. The WHO has been following the Chernobyl consequences, and come out with a new report about every decade. Each report dramatically lowers the estimate of deaths and other health consequences. As a matter of fact, the largest health effects now are psychosocial effects. That is, fear of and (over-)reaction to the radiation effects is causing more actual harm than the radiation itself. So potentially one of the easiest ways to mitigate the harmful effects of nuclear accidents (best of course: let's not have any!) is to (over-)react less. Of course not reacting at all would also be wrong, but it looks like the balance today is out of whack.