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The worst nuclear disaster made several ghost towns in one night and became the last straw on the USSR's back.
by stevefan1999 5y ago
The worst nuclear disaster made several ghost towns in one night and became the last straw on the USSR's back.
- Someone 5y agoNuclear accidents are rare events with huge impact, while fossil fuel deaths are common, with relatively small impact, killing by a thousand cuts. That doesn’t imply burning fuel is less deadly, though. By some estimates, fossil fuels kill more people each year than nuclear _ever_ did (including the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-23853-y https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-23853-y says over a million each year. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0013935121000487 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00139... increases that to over 8 million (with huge uncertainty) Now, nuclear provides is a few % of global energy, so you’d have to scale it up, and many of those early deaths due to pollution may be not _that_ early, but it definitely isn’t a given that nuclear is more dangerous than burning fossil fuels.