
Chernobyl's Tragic Legacy  - jshen
http://inmotion.magnumphotos.com/essay/chernobyl
======
saulrh
Wish I could downvote this. Single cases, no matter how tragic, do not make a
sweeping condemnation. Do we stop selling cars because a million people a year
get in car accidents and die messily? No. Should we stop building nuclear
power plants because, thirty years ago, some idiots built a really, really
terrible one and a few thousand people died messily? No.

And, yes, I know that I'm going to get flamed for this. Go ahead. It needs to
be said. If we want our species to survive the next hundred years, we need to
get our heads out of our emotional rear ends.

~~~
callmevlad
Wish I could downvote this. Just because we need nuclear energy to survive,
doesn't mean you need to demote this massive and tragic accident to a
statistical blip made up of "single cases".

~~~
breathesalt
Who told you "we" need nuclear energy to survive?

~~~
callmevlad
I was basically conceding that point to the parent, since that is not central
to the point I'm trying to make. I personally think that we as humans have
ample ingenuity to solve our future energy needs, I just don't want to see a
world where accidents like Chernobyl and Bhopal (and their many unfortunate
victims) are essentially swept under the rug as a cost of doing business.

~~~
saulrh
Agreed! That's why I think that more people should realize how many deaths are
attributable to fossil-fuel air pollution: millions per year.

------
ronnier
A UNSCEAR report places the total confirmed deaths from radiation at 64 as of
2008

~~~
srean
To add some perspective <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster>

This is not to belittle Chernobyl. But to provoke thought and discussion on
why a disaster of this scale has such a negligible mind-share.

------
callmevlad
Relevant conversation on a previous thread:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2374194>

