Frank von Hippel, Professor (Emeritus) of public and international affairs in the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University, opines that superficially, it is reasonable to leap to the conclusion that fear generated by the Chernobyl disaster turned the public against nuclear power, so strongly that even now, 30 years later, there is serious doubt (by only a few anti-nuclear groups) that it will ever be a major alternative to climate-threatening fossil fuels (Not true. Already is a major energy source). In the 15 years before the Chernobyl accident, an average of about 20 new nuclear power reactors came online each year. Five years after the accident, the average had dropped to four a year. But the full story is more complex.
The effects of Chernobyl on people, though significant, were not devastating. Beyond the evacuation area, it is estimated (via worst case) that the radiation could cause tens of thousands cases of cancer across Europe over 80 years. That may sound like a large number, but it is a mostly undetectable addition to the background cancer rate. One exception is thyroid cancer, caused by the ingestion of radioactive iodides .. there have been cases, but only 1 to 2% fatal, in the most affected regions of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. Despite the worst-case cancer deaths from Chernobyl and the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi damage to plants in Japan, however, nuclear power still appears safer than coal, measured in terms of average deaths per unit of electric energy generated.
According to a 2010 study by the National Research Council, if the U.S. 104 nuclear reactors had been replaced in 2005 with coal plants, the increased air pollution could have caused thousands of additional premature deaths annually. People are encouraged to worry by media more, however, about the long-term impact of radiation than they do about the effects of air pollution because they do not understand that radiation is all about us. It is the dose. Read on ..
Original Working URL: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/chernobyl-didn-apos-t-kill-nuclear-power/
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