5 ms·

I just watched the Chernobyl HBO series, and I couldn’t help but notice the parallels between that disaster and COVID-19, at least in the US. Those who lead go

I just watched the Chernobyl HBO series, and I couldn’t help but notice the parallels between that disaster and COVID-19, at least in the US. Those who lead governments are inherently motivated by self-preservation first and foremost, meaning that when something really bad happens, the inclination is to minimize the perception of a problem without considering the cost. That inclination cost thousands of lives in Ukraine in 1986, and will cost thousands of lives around the world now because leaders didn’t listen to the experts early on. Not to mention the constant war on science and intellectualism that has been permeating American politics for years. This is the price we pay to live in the political environment we have.

godelski 7y ago
I had a similar take, but most around me didn't. Most around me took away that nuclear is dangerous and shouldn't be used. Never mind that every country (USSR included) knew that a positive void reactor was a dumb idea. But as to the fear, most people I know thought the three men that went into the reactor died of horrible deaths. Despite the show even mentioning that they survived (I believe only one is dead now and died of a heart attack at old age. Could be radiation related, could be old, probably both, but it wasn't an abnormal death IIRC). There's even a lot of misinformation about how many people Chernobyl killed. We say "thousands of deaths" but it is hard to put that in perspective. If we say a thousand people dead in front of us, that's a lot. But if we're talking <30k deaths from 1986 - 2065, that's not that many people[0]. That total number is less than the average flu kills in just the US PER YEAR. It is about 380 people/year. A lot, but this pales in comparison to what our usage of coal does in a single country per year. As in some estimates of coal pollution kill more people in the US per year than all will from the worst nuclear disaster in the history of mankind ever will [1]. It is hard to compare our energy sources because we do not do them one to one. Nuclear's deaths have been caused from 3 disasters, one of which killed nobody, and one of which accounts for 99%[2] of those deaths. I think the thing about nuclear is that when things go wrong it is temporally and geographically localized. This is easy to see the damage. But it is hard to say that coal in the US kills more a year than all the world's nuclear power plants combined. If you bring stats in you generally get called inhumane, even if you are trying to use stats to save lives. It is a complicated and tricky subject. It is just hard to compare because the coal deaths are not temporally and geographically localized. Our brains weren't designed to easily reason about information like that, whereas they were designed to reason about the former. You're definitely right about a lot of what you've said. But my inclination is that while people did take a political message from the Chernobyl show (which I did love), they also took away an anti-nuclear sentiment. I think this is unfortunate because I believe there is overwhelming evidence that the technology directly saves hundreds of thousands of human lives and significantly help our environment. [0] https://science.time.com/2011/04/22/how-many-did-chernobyl-kill-more-than-4000/ https://science.time.com/2011/04/22/how-many-did-chernobyl-k... [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-other-reason-to-shift-away-from-coal-air-pollution-that-kills-thousands-every-year/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-other-reason-... [2] I'm not joking. 99% is concervative. Fukushima has only a single recorded radiation death. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...
- jcranmer 7y ago
  It's also worth pointing this factoid out: The Oroville Dam near-failure necessitated the evacuation of more people than the Fukushima failure. In actual fact, hydroelectric power has been far deadlier and more destructive than nuclear power (especially when scaled to a per-MW basis), yet it's the latter that's seen as too dangerous.
flatfilefan 7y ago
That statement about thousands of lives is not substantiated. “The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident caused the deaths, within a few days or weeks, of 30 workers and radiation injuries to hundreds of others. The accident caused the immediate evacuation of about 116 000 people and the permanent relocation of about 220 000 people. The accident caused social and psychological disruption, but apart from the 1800 thyroid cancers that have been reported in inidividuals exposed in childhood, there is no evidence of a major public health impact attributable to radiation exposure 14 years after the accident. No increase in overall cancer incidence or mortality has been observed that could be attributed to radiation exposure. The risk of leukaemia does not appear to be raised, even among the hundreds of thousands of recovery workers sent to clean up the environmental contamination. Neither is there any scientific evidence of other non-malignant disorders associated with radiation exposure“ from the Lancet https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(05)73632-1/fulltext#%20 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
- celticninja 7y ago
  However it did leave a swathe of damaged and uninhabitable land.
  - selectodude 7y ago
    Which is currently on fire and spewing radioactivity.
    - celticninja 7y ago
      I mean that's definitely wrong.
  - cellular 7y ago
    I read that, because it is uninhabitable to humans, wild life is flourishing in that area! And forests are taking over!
    - 7y ago

godelski 7y ago

I had a similar take, but most around me didn't. Most around me took away that nuclear is dangerous and shouldn't be used. Never mind that every country (USSR included) knew that a positive void reactor was a dumb idea. But as to the fear, most people I know thought the three men that went into the reactor died of horrible deaths. Despite the show even mentioning that they survived (I believe only one is dead now and died of a heart attack at old age. Could be radiation related, could be old, probably both, but it wasn't an abnormal death IIRC). There's even a lot of misinformation about how many people Chernobyl killed. We say "thousands of deaths" but it is hard to put that in perspective. If we say a thousand people dead in front of us, that's a lot. But if we're talking <30k deaths from 1986 - 2065, that's not that many people[0]. That total number is less than the average flu kills in just the US PER YEAR. It is about 380 people/year. A lot, but this pales in comparison to what our usage of coal does in a single country per year. As in some estimates of coal pollution kill more people in the US per year than all will from the worst nuclear disaster in the history of mankind ever will [1]. It is hard to compare our energy sources because we do not do them one to one. Nuclear's deaths have been caused from 3 disasters, one of which killed nobody, and one of which accounts for 99%[2] of those deaths. I think the thing about nuclear is that when things go wrong it is temporally and geographically localized. This is easy to see the damage. But it is hard to say that coal in the US kills more a year than all the world's nuclear power plants combined. If you bring stats in you generally get called inhumane, even if you are trying to use stats to save lives. It is a complicated and tricky subject. It is just hard to compare because the coal deaths are not temporally and geographically localized. Our brains weren't designed to easily reason about information like that, whereas they were designed to reason about the former. You're definitely right about a lot of what you've said. But my inclination is that while people did take a political message from the Chernobyl show (which I did love), they also took away an anti-nuclear sentiment. I think this is unfortunate because I believe there is overwhelming evidence that the technology directly saves hundreds of thousands of human lives and significantly help our environment. [0] https://science.time.com/2011/04/22/how-many-did-chernobyl-kill-more-than-4000/ https://science.time.com/2011/04/22/how-many-did-chernobyl-k... [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-other-reason-to-shift-away-from-coal-air-pollution-that-kills-thousands-every-year/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-other-reason-... [2] I'm not joking. 99% is concervative. Fukushima has only a single recorded radiation death. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...

jcranmer 7y ago
It's also worth pointing this factoid out: The Oroville Dam near-failure necessitated the evacuation of more people than the Fukushima failure. In actual fact, hydroelectric power has been far deadlier and more destructive than nuclear power (especially when scaled to a per-MW basis), yet it's the latter that's seen as too dangerous.

flatfilefan 7y ago

That statement about thousands of lives is not substantiated. “The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident caused the deaths, within a few days or weeks, of 30 workers and radiation injuries to hundreds of others. The accident caused the immediate evacuation of about 116 000 people and the permanent relocation of about 220 000 people. The accident caused social and psychological disruption, but apart from the 1800 thyroid cancers that have been reported in inidividuals exposed in childhood, there is no evidence of a major public health impact attributable to radiation exposure 14 years after the accident. No increase in overall cancer incidence or mortality has been observed that could be attributed to radiation exposure. The risk of leukaemia does not appear to be raised, even among the hundreds of thousands of recovery workers sent to clean up the environmental contamination. Neither is there any scientific evidence of other non-malignant disorders associated with radiation exposure“ from the Lancet https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(05)73632-1/fulltext#%20 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

celticninja 7y ago
However it did leave a swathe of damaged and uninhabitable land.
- selectodude 7y ago
  Which is currently on fire and spewing radioactivity.
  - celticninja 7y ago
    I mean that's definitely wrong.
- cellular 7y ago
  I read that, because it is uninhabitable to humans, wild life is flourishing in that area! And forests are taking over!
  - 7y ago