5 ms·

You seem to have cherry picked sources that have a lower estimate for all these figures, i.e., "propaganda numbers". I think the best source for these numbers

by iooi 7y ago

You seem to have cherry picked sources that have a lower estimate for all these figures, i.e., "propaganda numbers". I think the best source for these numbers is the Wikipedia article "Deaths due to the Chernobyl disaster" [1]. From the article, Russia claims "estimates ranging from 4,000" while scientific and environmental organizations claim "no fewer than 93,000". It's clear that Russia wants to downplay the enormous human and environmental toll this has had and will continue to have. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_di...

the_af 7y ago
While later contested, it's not only "Russia" which estimated 4000 deaths. Wikipedia states the United Nations took part in the joint group, and > "[...] worked to establish international consensus on the effects of the accident via a series of reports that collated 20 years of research to make official previous UN, IAEA, and World Health Organization (WHO) estimates of a total of 4,000 deaths due to disaster-related illnesses." In fact, the sentence you quoted states: > "[...] there is considerable debate concerning the accurate number of deaths due to the disaster's long-term health effects, with estimates ranging from 4,000 (per the 2005 and 2006 conclusions of a joint consortium of the United Nations and the governments of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia), to no fewer than 93,000 (per the conflicting conclusions of various scientific, health, environmental, and survivors' organizations)." So it's not just Russia.
- wiz21c 7y ago
  anyway, it's much lower than death caused by burning coal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents
  - the_af 7y ago
    Yes. I think it's important the keep the hyperbole to a minimum, if we're truly interested in safe energy and in understanding this accident and its impact. Speaking of millions of deaths, as if it were proven fact, or getting our knowledge from sensationalized miniseries, is doing a disservice to both the Chernobyl disaster and the topic of nuclear energy.
    - HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
      It's unfortunate that people still point to Chernobyl as why we should never go back to nuclear power ever again.
      - pvaldes 7y ago
        Taking in mind that the human population living in the area has sinked, and that Prypiat has been a ghost town eating money for 33 years, I can understand the general lack of enthusiasm for repeating the Chernobyl experience at home.
        dkarl 7y ago
        How many Chernobyls would it take to equal the damage that is already inevitable from global warming? That's a serious question. It can be answered by comparing number of deaths, number of people displaced, or economic and political disruption, but no matter how you calculate the answer, the result is that Chernobyl is a tiny event by comparison.
        TeMPOraL 7y ago
        Given the extent of tourism into the exclusion zone (myself visiting Prypiat in 2017), I wouldn't be surprised if the town itself actually made money and if (excluding opportunity cost and the costs of Sarcophagus) the whole Zone was net-profitable now.
        pvaldes 7y ago
        Well, If you exclude costs in your formula, all is benefit. This is true. Lets talk about the costs. The economic damage caused by Chernobyl in 30 years is estimated in 235 Billion of dollars. Source Belarus Foreign Ministry: http://chernobyl.undp.org/russian/docs/belarus_23_anniversary.pdf http://chernobyl.undp.org/russian/docs/belarus_23_anniversar... This includes destroying trust in Ukrainian agriculture for 30 years and removing also a good chunk of lands suitable for agriculture in a country previously called "The Breadbasket of Europe (and soviet countries)". I would expect also huge maintenance bills for a long time. The cost of the new sarcophagous and auxiliary buildings is estimated in 2.3 Billion dollars extra. Plus increase of health services and cancer surveillance checks in nations affected by the disaster (like Ukranie, Belarus or Russia, but also Polland or Germany). Belarus registered a x40 increase in children's thyroid cancers since the accident. Ukraine and Belarus still need to spend more than 5% of its annual budget in benefit payments to compensate 7 million people for the accident. In whole, Belarus pays around $1 million at day for Chernobyl Plus the cost of vigillance of the restricted area to avoid garbage collectors (if not, mafias could load trucks with free metal scraps and sell it in Moscow, Berlin or Paris for example), or keeping unauthorized adventurers from doing stupid things. Plus the cost of the damaged nuclear central itself that lose a quarter of its planned energy production for 15 years and is not producing any energy since the year 2000; only debts. Taking all of this in mind, As thematic park and bussiness, Chernobyl is a ruinous one. Is a nice continental nature park, the first in the world, but apart of that is a ruinous adventure.
  - _nalply 7y ago
    We shouldn't contrast fossil to nuclear energy but both to renewables. In other words, stop burning things to get energy, for fossil energy because of the carbon dioxide and for nuclear energy because long-term storage of wastes is an unsolved problem. I am surprised again and again that people propose nuclear energy as a solution to climate change. Don't they know we will come out of the frying pan into the fire with nuclear energy? Enough said.
    - _nalply 7y ago
      Edit: I should not have been so inflammatory, sorry for that. So let me retry: We shouldn't contrast fossil to nuclear energy but both to renewables. We really should go out of both coal and nuclear. In other words, stop burning non-renewable things to get energy, for fossil energy because of the carbon dioxide and for nuclear energy because of the long-term storage of waste.
trhway 7y ago
> while scientific and environmental organizations claim "no fewer than 93,000". that is on the right scale. The Gomel and Mogilev regions of Belarus took the brunt of the fallout, and the cancer rates there is significantly higher. For example, the rate of the breast cancer (the most frequent cancer - normally more than 1 in 10 women would get it during lifetime) is 2x there (so with total 1M+ women living in those 2 regions more than 100K of them would get the breast cancer due to Chernobyl). In general, comparing Belarus cancer rates to Russia, Ukraine, Poland - the surrounding countries with a lot of similarities wrt. environment, ethnicity/DNA, lifestyle/unhealthy habits/etc. - Belarus gets about 10K extra cancer cases per year (with about 50% mortality).
- tptacek 7y ago
  Belarus is different from its neighbors in more significant ways than its proximity to Chernobyl; it's famously "the last dictatorship in Europe". Since the fall of the Soviet Union, it's economy has been weaker than its neighbors, as has its ties to the European Union.
  - trhway 7y ago
    That isnt a factor here for at least two reasons: 1. It doesn't have geographical distribution correlation that the Chernobyl fallout has with the cancer rates increase. 2. The Belarus per-capita GDP is more than 2x that of Ukraine.
    - yareally 7y ago
      I believe much of that drop is due to the Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea, followed by the invasion of Donbass. The drop off can be seen in the link below starting in 2014 when the invasion was initiated: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?locations=UA-BY https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?location... You're technically correct (depending on where you find the GDP data), but I don't believe it would be the case if the invasion and annexation had not happened. The numbers prior to 2014 show Ukraine with a much higher GDP than Belarus
ggm 7y ago
You rejected a primary source and proposed a secondary source of amateur curation?
philshem 7y ago
There are all sort of statistical outliers when looking at cancer rates around the rest of Europe. See, for example, testicular cancer in Swiss men in 1987/1988: https://twitter.com/philshem/status/1131635837878362112?s=21 https://twitter.com/philshem/status/1131635837878362112?s=21

by iooi 7y ago

the_af 7y ago

While later contested, it's not only "Russia" which estimated 4000 deaths. Wikipedia states the United Nations took part in the joint group, and > "[...] worked to establish international consensus on the effects of the accident via a series of reports that collated 20 years of research to make official previous UN, IAEA, and World Health Organization (WHO) estimates of a total of 4,000 deaths due to disaster-related illnesses." In fact, the sentence you quoted states: > "[...] there is considerable debate concerning the accurate number of deaths due to the disaster's long-term health effects, with estimates ranging from 4,000 (per the 2005 and 2006 conclusions of a joint consortium of the United Nations and the governments of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia), to no fewer than 93,000 (per the conflicting conclusions of various scientific, health, environmental, and survivors' organizations)." So it's not just Russia.

wiz21c 7y ago
anyway, it's much lower than death caused by burning coal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents
- the_af 7y ago
  Yes. I think it's important the keep the hyperbole to a minimum, if we're truly interested in safe energy and in understanding this accident and its impact. Speaking of millions of deaths, as if it were proven fact, or getting our knowledge from sensationalized miniseries, is doing a disservice to both the Chernobyl disaster and the topic of nuclear energy.
  - HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
    It's unfortunate that people still point to Chernobyl as why we should never go back to nuclear power ever again.
    - pvaldes 7y ago
      Taking in mind that the human population living in the area has sinked, and that Prypiat has been a ghost town eating money for 33 years, I can understand the general lack of enthusiasm for repeating the Chernobyl experience at home.
      - dkarl 7y ago
        How many Chernobyls would it take to equal the damage that is already inevitable from global warming? That's a serious question. It can be answered by comparing number of deaths, number of people displaced, or economic and political disruption, but no matter how you calculate the answer, the result is that Chernobyl is a tiny event by comparison.
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        Given the extent of tourism into the exclusion zone (myself visiting Prypiat in 2017), I wouldn't be surprised if the town itself actually made money and if (excluding opportunity cost and the costs of Sarcophagus) the whole Zone was net-profitable now.
        pvaldes 7y ago
        Well, If you exclude costs in your formula, all is benefit. This is true. Lets talk about the costs. The economic damage caused by Chernobyl in 30 years is estimated in 235 Billion of dollars. Source Belarus Foreign Ministry: http://chernobyl.undp.org/russian/docs/belarus_23_anniversary.pdf http://chernobyl.undp.org/russian/docs/belarus_23_anniversar... This includes destroying trust in Ukrainian agriculture for 30 years and removing also a good chunk of lands suitable for agriculture in a country previously called "The Breadbasket of Europe (and soviet countries)". I would expect also huge maintenance bills for a long time. The cost of the new sarcophagous and auxiliary buildings is estimated in 2.3 Billion dollars extra. Plus increase of health services and cancer surveillance checks in nations affected by the disaster (like Ukranie, Belarus or Russia, but also Polland or Germany). Belarus registered a x40 increase in children's thyroid cancers since the accident. Ukraine and Belarus still need to spend more than 5% of its annual budget in benefit payments to compensate 7 million people for the accident. In whole, Belarus pays around $1 million at day for Chernobyl Plus the cost of vigillance of the restricted area to avoid garbage collectors (if not, mafias could load trucks with free metal scraps and sell it in Moscow, Berlin or Paris for example), or keeping unauthorized adventurers from doing stupid things. Plus the cost of the damaged nuclear central itself that lose a quarter of its planned energy production for 15 years and is not producing any energy since the year 2000; only debts. Taking all of this in mind, As thematic park and bussiness, Chernobyl is a ruinous one. Is a nice continental nature park, the first in the world, but apart of that is a ruinous adventure.
- _nalply 7y ago
  We shouldn't contrast fossil to nuclear energy but both to renewables. In other words, stop burning things to get energy, for fossil energy because of the carbon dioxide and for nuclear energy because long-term storage of wastes is an unsolved problem. I am surprised again and again that people propose nuclear energy as a solution to climate change. Don't they know we will come out of the frying pan into the fire with nuclear energy? Enough said.
  - _nalply 7y ago
    Edit: I should not have been so inflammatory, sorry for that. So let me retry: We shouldn't contrast fossil to nuclear energy but both to renewables. We really should go out of both coal and nuclear. In other words, stop burning non-renewable things to get energy, for fossil energy because of the carbon dioxide and for nuclear energy because of the long-term storage of waste.

trhway 7y ago

> while scientific and environmental organizations claim "no fewer than 93,000". that is on the right scale. The Gomel and Mogilev regions of Belarus took the brunt of the fallout, and the cancer rates there is significantly higher. For example, the rate of the breast cancer (the most frequent cancer - normally more than 1 in 10 women would get it during lifetime) is 2x there (so with total 1M+ women living in those 2 regions more than 100K of them would get the breast cancer due to Chernobyl). In general, comparing Belarus cancer rates to Russia, Ukraine, Poland - the surrounding countries with a lot of similarities wrt. environment, ethnicity/DNA, lifestyle/unhealthy habits/etc. - Belarus gets about 10K extra cancer cases per year (with about 50% mortality).

tptacek 7y ago
Belarus is different from its neighbors in more significant ways than its proximity to Chernobyl; it's famously "the last dictatorship in Europe". Since the fall of the Soviet Union, it's economy has been weaker than its neighbors, as has its ties to the European Union.
- trhway 7y ago
  That isnt a factor here for at least two reasons: 1. It doesn't have geographical distribution correlation that the Chernobyl fallout has with the cancer rates increase. 2. The Belarus per-capita GDP is more than 2x that of Ukraine.
  - yareally 7y ago
    I believe much of that drop is due to the Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea, followed by the invasion of Donbass. The drop off can be seen in the link below starting in 2014 when the invasion was initiated: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?locations=UA-BY https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?location... You're technically correct (depending on where you find the GDP data), but I don't believe it would be the case if the invasion and annexation had not happened. The numbers prior to 2014 show Ukraine with a much higher GDP than Belarus

ggm 7y ago

You rejected a primary source and proposed a secondary source of amateur curation?

philshem 7y ago

There are all sort of statistical outliers when looking at cancer rates around the rest of Europe. See, for example, testicular cancer in Swiss men in 1987/1988: https://twitter.com/philshem/status/1131635837878362112?s=21 https://twitter.com/philshem/status/1131635837878362112?s=21