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> data sources saying otherwise generally are using pre-Fukushima stats. I thought only one person died as a direct result of the Fukushima meltdown? And the o

> data sources saying otherwise generally are using pre-Fukushima stats. I thought only one person died as a direct result of the Fukushima meltdown? And the other deaths attributed to it were due to poor handling of the people who evacuated; basically frail people dying in temporary shelters, unrelated to the nuclear aspect.

moloch-hai 4y ago
It has always been easy to lie with statistics. The "one" figure is such a lie, easy to parrot.
- rhn_mk1 4y ago
  This is a serious accusation. Show the truth.
  - Arnt 4y ago
    The "one" figure ignores deaths caused by evacuation SNAFUs. But if some event causes an evacuation and the evacuation has a normal number of mishaps, then that event causes those mishaps. Evacuations are rare and happen under unusual circumstances, they will suffer from SNAFUs. You can't cause an evacuation, expect that it'll go perfectly and deny any responsibility when it doesn't.
jefftk 4y ago
That's right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa... I had thought that counting evacuation deaths was correct, since I'd thought the evacuation was to reduce the risk if far more radiation was released. But reading up on it now, it seems like the evacuation was after the risk of that was over, and was in response to the current levels of radiation? In which case it looks like a large overreaction.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
Old stats is the answer, but not because of Nuclear. The wind and solar industries are ramping exponentially, and the death rates are usually done per TWh generated. The solar deaths are heavily weighted towards the start (mining, installation) while the energy produced lags and accumulates over decades. The stats used to show that rooftop solar was slightly more dangerous that nuclear per TWh, but the number is dropping faster for solar so it's not been true for years. The slighlty more important point is how far ahead nuclear solar and wind are, compared with fossil fuels. It's a stark difference.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  The nuclear stat is missing all the deaths of miners and people living near mines and old tailings dumps. Similarly solar is missing all the silver (and past Cd/Te/In/etc miners) miners and people dealing with pollution and wind is missing knock on effects from rare earths and PFCs (nuclear may also be, but we don't get any public info on the LCA of UF6 production or what modern centrifuges are made of). The first is ongoing however, and the second is decreasing exponentially.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    I believe these stats do include mining materials for nuclear and renewables, though I've not double checked recently.
benj111 4y ago
I think if you die as a result of an evacuation from a nuclear incident, that should count in the death toll of that nuclear incident. They wouldnt be dead if there weren't a nuclear incident, so....
- trashtester 4y ago
  People forget that the "evacuation" happened after (and because of) a tsunami/earthquake that killed 20000 people. That was the real root cause of all the deaths. The immediate cause of most off the "evacuation" deaths, was that a large number of very old people were exposed to moderate amounts of stress due to being relocated which caused them to die slighly before what they might otherwise have. (Kind of like when we count terminal cancer patients as dying "from Covid" if they had covid when dying). For these people, there was no medical reason to relocate them in the large majority of cases. If you're 80+, a few MSv of exposure has no effect on you life expectancy, since you will die from other sources long before any cancer can develop. In other words, very few years of expected life were lost, and those that WERE lost, was almost entirly due to a huge overraction to whatever increase in radiation there may have been. Which, I would argue, should primarily be blamed on anti-nuclear fear-mongering propaganda. Imagine a racist couple living in a suburb when a Mexican family moves in to the next-door house, stressing them out. If the racist husband dies from a stress related illness after that, I would argue it was his racism that killed him, not the Mexican family. Spreading excessive (as in actual misinformation) anti-nuclear propaganda is like spreading such racism or similar forms of prejudice or bigotry. It doesn't matter if it's Greenpeace or Tucker that spreads the propaganda. The fact is that the Fukushima plants were built at a time when the only alternative was coal. Had they never been built, Japan would have built coal plants with the same capacity at the same time. Given the amount of toxic polution caused by old coal plants over such a time span, I'm sure Nuclear Power in Japan has saved 10s if not 100s of thousands of lives to date, even before counting any damage from global warming. And Japan is STILL building new coal plants, partly because of the anti-nuclear propaganda, which will continue to cause harm long into the future. If anything, the vast majority of deaths that will happen as a consequence of the Fukushima incident, will be due to several countries shutting down (or failing to build) nuclear plants while still relying on large amounts of dirty fossil fuels, in many cases still including coal/lignite.

moloch-hai 4y ago

It has always been easy to lie with statistics. The "one" figure is such a lie, easy to parrot.

rhn_mk1 4y ago
This is a serious accusation. Show the truth.
- Arnt 4y ago
  The "one" figure ignores deaths caused by evacuation SNAFUs. But if some event causes an evacuation and the evacuation has a normal number of mishaps, then that event causes those mishaps. Evacuations are rare and happen under unusual circumstances, they will suffer from SNAFUs. You can't cause an evacuation, expect that it'll go perfectly and deny any responsibility when it doesn't.

jefftk 4y ago

That's right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa... I had thought that counting evacuation deaths was correct, since I'd thought the evacuation was to reduce the risk if far more radiation was released. But reading up on it now, it seems like the evacuation was after the risk of that was over, and was in response to the current levels of radiation? In which case it looks like a large overreaction.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

Old stats is the answer, but not because of Nuclear. The wind and solar industries are ramping exponentially, and the death rates are usually done per TWh generated. The solar deaths are heavily weighted towards the start (mining, installation) while the energy produced lags and accumulates over decades. The stats used to show that rooftop solar was slightly more dangerous that nuclear per TWh, but the number is dropping faster for solar so it's not been true for years. The slighlty more important point is how far ahead nuclear solar and wind are, compared with fossil fuels. It's a stark difference.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
The nuclear stat is missing all the deaths of miners and people living near mines and old tailings dumps. Similarly solar is missing all the silver (and past Cd/Te/In/etc miners) miners and people dealing with pollution and wind is missing knock on effects from rare earths and PFCs (nuclear may also be, but we don't get any public info on the LCA of UF6 production or what modern centrifuges are made of). The first is ongoing however, and the second is decreasing exponentially.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  I believe these stats do include mining materials for nuclear and renewables, though I've not double checked recently.

benj111 4y ago

I think if you die as a result of an evacuation from a nuclear incident, that should count in the death toll of that nuclear incident. They wouldnt be dead if there weren't a nuclear incident, so....

trashtester 4y ago
People forget that the "evacuation" happened after (and because of) a tsunami/earthquake that killed 20000 people. That was the real root cause of all the deaths. The immediate cause of most off the "evacuation" deaths, was that a large number of very old people were exposed to moderate amounts of stress due to being relocated which caused them to die slighly before what they might otherwise have. (Kind of like when we count terminal cancer patients as dying "from Covid" if they had covid when dying). For these people, there was no medical reason to relocate them in the large majority of cases. If you're 80+, a few MSv of exposure has no effect on you life expectancy, since you will die from other sources long before any cancer can develop. In other words, very few years of expected life were lost, and those that WERE lost, was almost entirly due to a huge overraction to whatever increase in radiation there may have been. Which, I would argue, should primarily be blamed on anti-nuclear fear-mongering propaganda. Imagine a racist couple living in a suburb when a Mexican family moves in to the next-door house, stressing them out. If the racist husband dies from a stress related illness after that, I would argue it was his racism that killed him, not the Mexican family. Spreading excessive (as in actual misinformation) anti-nuclear propaganda is like spreading such racism or similar forms of prejudice or bigotry. It doesn't matter if it's Greenpeace or Tucker that spreads the propaganda. The fact is that the Fukushima plants were built at a time when the only alternative was coal. Had they never been built, Japan would have built coal plants with the same capacity at the same time. Given the amount of toxic polution caused by old coal plants over such a time span, I'm sure Nuclear Power in Japan has saved 10s if not 100s of thousands of lives to date, even before counting any damage from global warming. And Japan is STILL building new coal plants, partly because of the anti-nuclear propaganda, which will continue to cause harm long into the future. If anything, the vast majority of deaths that will happen as a consequence of the Fukushima incident, will be due to several countries shutting down (or failing to build) nuclear plants while still relying on large amounts of dirty fossil fuels, in many cases still including coal/lignite.