
Irradiated: The hidden legacy of 70 years of atomic weaponry - pp19dd
http://media.mcclatchydc.com/static/features/irradiated/#story
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cperciva
_At least 33,480 former nuclear workers who received compensation are dead_

Yes, and 100% of US soldiers who were shot at in the first world war are dead,
even if none of the bullets ever hit them!

Counting deaths makes sense for a short-term event (e.g., X residents of
Hiroshima died within a week of the bomb being dropped) but when you're
looking at deaths over the course of 70 years, you need to either adjust for
the number of individuals who would have died from natural causes or (much
better) estimate how many QALYs were lost compared to their natural lifespan.

I have no doubt that there were real health and safety problems with the
production and maintenance of the US nuclear arsenal -- particularly in the
early days when the issues were poorly understood -- but statistics like the
above do nothing to inform and a great deal to mislead, and should be avoided
whenever possible.

~~~
Spooky23
Interesting perspective, but nobody tried to pretend that getting shot in the
First World War didn't happen, or that being shot wasn't a problem. These
workers were subjected to workplace dangers that were unacceptable in any
other context, and many paid a dear price.

There are many deaths, cancer clusters and environmental impacts from nuclear
weapons production.

~~~
cperciva
I said _being shot at_. 100% of WW1 soldiers are dead even if none of the
bullets hit them.

I'm not saying that nuclear weapons production didn't kill people; just that
the statistic they cited is utterly useless.

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roflchoppa
I'm amazed of the unethical treatment of the workers whom handle the plutonium
plates (Ralph Stanton). It's a shame that these companies are allowed to
operate, it's also a shame that there exists other people whom are continuing
this cycle, the doctors whom miss-treat them, the managers that are writing
them up in-order to get them fired, the individuals that make the calls for
alpha particle detectors to be removed from above the working area.

There was more text down here, but I'm at a loss of words.

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fennecfoxen
I'm told my grandfather photographed early atomic bomb tests, which is why my
mother grew up on a Strategic Air Command base. He died in the 1980s,
relatively young (though smoking contributed) and matters of his health and
his pension were also subject to bureaucratic limbo.

My other grandfather trained to operate a Davey Crockett missile (the
shoulder-launched missile with a M388 atomic warhead). I'm mostly just glad to
live in a world where I worry about terrorism instead of global thermonuclear
annihilation...

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kumarski
Plutonium 238 is something we need a lot more of for deep space flight.

[http://kumar.party/2015/07/04/nasa-needs-
plutonium%E2%80%8A-...](http://kumar.party/2015/07/04/nasa-needs-
plutonium%E2%80%8A-%E2%80%8A238-for-interstellar-flight-the-only-viable-
production-source-is-nuclear-weapons-production-waste/)

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ablation
Fascinating. But the site damn near killed my Firefox.

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teh_klev
Worth a read is the story of Karen Silkwood:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Silkwood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Silkwood)

Also worth a watch is the film Silkwood based on her time at Kerr McGee:

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086312/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086312/)

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atemerev
At least huge compensation amounts were paid, and the victims are remembered
on this page and elsewhere.

In Soviet nuclear program, lots of human beings died for nothing, their names
forgotten.

~~~
pdkl95
I thank the 3828 liquidators that cleaned up the worst of the Chernobyl roof,
two minutes at a time.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfDa8tR25dk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfDa8tR25dk)

> died for nothing

While that is certainly true, it's worth remembering that most are still
alive, though many are now having trouble in the healthcare system thanks to
poor CCCP records (or finding those records now).

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fnazeeri
And we are spending another _trillion_ dollars on this?!

~~~
fennecfoxen
Hmm. I need perspective on 'trillion'. _calculates_

$1T is basically telling every employed person and factory in the USA that
they're going to spend three weeks working to pay for the new nuclear weapons.
I wonder how long that investment is good for.

~~~
Gibbon1
That is the way to think about it. From my dad who worked for the government I
learned something contrarian. The government doesn't waste much money at the
level of a worker. The government wastes money at the program level. As an
example the Reagan administration brought the USS Iowa out of mothballs. You
can bet that the work done to upgrade her was done efficiently and
economically (as efficiently and economically as any huge project like that
goes). But on the big picture, they should have left her to rust.

Stuff like this is why I make comments about building public infrastructure.
Say the critics are current, the California High Speed Rail project is a
boondoggle. Well at least we get a high speed rail line out of the deal. Vs a
couple thousand shiny new nukes which aren't useful to anyone really.

