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Is it? There have been two major nuclear power accidents in 70 years of civilian use. The total death toll, including long-term cancer deaths, from Chernobyl i
by p-e-w 3y ago
Is it? There have been two major nuclear power accidents in 70 years of civilian use.
The total death toll, including long-term cancer deaths, from Chernobyl is typically estimated around 4,000. For Fukushima it's a few dozen at most (while 25,000 died from the tsunami itself).
Meanwhile, the number of deaths from outdoor air pollution due to burning fossil fuels is estimated at 8.7 million – for the year 2021 alone.
"Humanity's worst nightmare" is the truck in your garage – not the nuclear reactor a hundred miles away.
- CameronNemo 3y agoDidn't the dust in Chernobyl get kicked up last year? And Zaporizhia has been a major hazard. Things would have surely been a lot less complicated without those two plants.
- abenga 3y agoStill, it's extremely hard to point to anyone who's been directly harmed by those two plants (other than the soldiers messing around there, of course). Should countries build new nuclear plants? Maybe not, especially if the money would generate more watts using renewables. Shutting down extant nuclear plants while a country still has open coal and gas plants? That shows that they are not at all serious about the whole climate change thing at all.