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"The series ends with an epilogue noting that, while the official death toll remains 31, other estimates have ranged from 4,000 to 93,000, with some estimates c
by acidburnNSA 7y ago
"The series ends with an epilogue noting that, while the official death toll remains 31, other estimates have ranged from 4,000 to 93,000, with some estimates climbing even higher."
This was the worst moment in the series. The otherwise pretty solid description of the event was tainted by that. I screamed at the screen. The correct statement would be closer to:
"60 deaths have been directly attributed to Chernobyl, and large careful consortia of hundreds of scientists concluded in the 2000s that "up to 4000" early deaths may occur from the accident across the decades, though they later revised the statement to say they do not recommend multiplying small doses by large populations to get large death values. Meanwhile, a few fringe groups and Greenpeace said 93,000 and Helen Caldicott says millions just because she feels that it must be that high. By the way, burning fossil fuel kills 4 million people every year by air pollution. That's a Chernobyl every 2.5 days, day after day. So even though Chernobyl was horrible, the dispassionate numbers show that nuclear energy is still extraordinarily safe compared to other major forms of energy production. Plus it is very nearly carbon free, which matters more than ever today."
The UNSCEAR group with the 4000 number is analogous to the IPCC. The 93,000 and beyond people are analogous to the anti-vaxxers. The HBO series gave them equal weight.
Look it up! It is truly shocking.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- simonh 7y agoEver thought of a career as a script writer? You’re a natural.
- acidburnNSA 7y agoLol. We would a sat through like 10 minutes of white text on black background with quiet dramatic music but it'd be worth it.
- throw0101a 7y agoThere seem to be published papers, in respectable journals, that have higher numbers: * https://ourworldindata.org/what-was-the-death-toll-from-chernobyl-and-fukushima https://ourworldindata.org/what-was-the-death-toll-from-cher...
- acidburnNSA 7y agoOh yeah I didn't mean to imply that the fringe group numbers are not published. There are a few groups who have published very high numbers. They are very fringe. For these big-science things you have to look at meta-analyses. An idea with a few publications should not be weighted evenly alongside one with thousands. That's my beef with the show. The assumptions you have to believe to believe those numbers run into big trouble when you compare low natural background radiation areas with high background ones. For example, Ramsar, Iran has ~100 mSv/year background, compared to 3 mSv/yr in the USA. And Guarapari, Brazil has up to 30 mSv/yr. And smaller variations exist throughout the world. Yet we don't find statistically significant differences in cancer rates as a function of dose rate at any of these levels. So taking a dose rate far lower than these values, using a unjustifiably conservative dose-to-death conversion factor, and multiplying by large numbers of people is not a great method. This is what the UNSCEAR people came out and said in their recent reports. See section 3.1.f in the 2012 UNSCEAR report [1]. The UNSCEAR team also stopped saying their own 4000 and 9000 numbers because they also relied upon using the unjustifiable method of multiplying low doses by large populations too. [1] https://www.unscear.org/docs/publications/2012/UNSCEAR_2012_Report.pdf https://www.unscear.org/docs/publications/2012/UNSCEAR_2012_... EDIT: Adjusted dose rates in Iran below absolute peak (200 mSv/yr) via input in comment below. And correction section reference in UNSCEAR report
- throwaway_pdp09 7y ago> Oh yeah I didn't mean to imply that the fringe group numbers are not published "they disagree with me so they must be fringe" > Ramsar, Iran has ~200 mSv/year background from wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsar%2C_Mazandaran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsar%2C_Mazandaran "Record levels were found in a house where the effective radiation dose due to external radiation was 131 mSv/a, and the committed dose from radon was 72 mSv/a.[8] This unique case..." Note the word unique. So your claim for that area is in fact higher than the highest single location they found (one house), as I read it. > See recommendation 1e I would if I could find it. "1e" doesn't appear in that document. Could you quote it for us? Thanks. > The UNSCEAR team also stopped saying... Specifically, where?
- panta 7y agoI'm not knowledgeable on the subject, but reading the related wikipedia page [1], and in particular the section about liquidator mortality, leaves me skeptic about the <100 numbers. And there are also deaths which are more loosely related, but still related. See for example the abortions: "an estimated excess of about 150,000 elective abortions may have been performed on otherwise healthy pregnancies out of fears of radiation from Chernobyl" [3]. Even if you consider most if not all of these ill-advised, these are nonetheless lives lost due to the disaster. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_di... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_disaster#Liquidator_mortality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_di... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Abortions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Abortions
- acidburnNSA 7y agoI personally continue to use 4000 deaths total (acute and latent), which is what the UNSCEAR folks said up until 2006 or so. Some colleagues yell at me and tell me that there's no basis for a number this high given what we now know about radiation dose response and about what's happened monitoring people for decades. But I use it just in case. Fear of radiation kills thousands of people. At Fukushima, the only nuclear-related (non-tsunami) deaths were from the evacuation. (Up to 1 person did die from radiation, they say now). That's why I fight to make people understand it more and be less afraid. We can all agree that unduly panicking people about radiation is bad. https://aeon.co/ideas/fear-of-radiation-is-more-dangerous-than-radiation-itself https://aeon.co/ideas/fear-of-radiation-is-more-dangerous-th...
- vilhelm_s 7y agoI think it's worth noting that the UNSCEAR report also said 5000 more deaths among less exposed people (so 9000 in total), it's all rather arbitrary.
- acidburnNSA 7y agoThat was in 2006. They changed their policy and stopped multiplying small dose rates by large populations to get large numbers after that because the linear-no-threshold assumption has not been shown to be applicable at very low doses. Their later reports do not give any large numbers like this.
- trhway 7y ago>a few fringe groups and Greenpeace said 93,000 yep, pretty close. The cancer rates in the Gomel and Mogilev (2 regions where the majority of fallout happened) are significantly higher - like for example breast cancer is about 2 times - and that means several thousands extra deaths per year. People talking about small/mild background level miss the point of the fallout. It isn't about background level, it is about radioisotopes, especially alpha generating ones, getting inside the body.
- acidburnNSA 7y agoCitation needed for higher cancer in Gomel being significantly higher because of radioactive fallout from chernobyl causing several thousand extra deaths per year. Got a paper saying that that you could share? I ask because it contradicts what the WHO and UN have been saying for several decades.
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- m463 7y agoYou could also say they gave equal weight to the lower number 31. Some of those HBO folks realize the same sort of biases for overreporting also apply to people in positions of power, who will do anything to control the narrative. In some countries they just kill the journalists (a different sort of fallout that is also not directly attributed to radiation)