> IMO thats entirely rational. Dying is not what I'm scared of when it comes to a Chernobyl-like accident. Dying slowly and painfully of radiation poisoning is. It's hard to imagine a worse fate.
The good news is that really didn't happen. About 40 or 50 people died of acute radiation poisoning (that's a bad way to go). Many were displaced. The most common form of cancer that occurred as a result of Chernobyl was thyroid cancer which is 'almost 100%' [2] curable generally speaking. You take the thyroid out, and folks are put on thyroxine. Broadly preventable with iodine pills and also principally attributable to acute exposure immediately following.
Worth skimming the summary of the UNSCEAR report. [1]
> Apart from this increase [6000 cases of thyroid cancer], there is no evidence of a major public health impact attributable to radiation exposure two decades after the accident. There is no scientific evidence of increases in overall cancer incidence or mortality rates or in rates of non-malignant disorders that could be related to radiation exposure. The incidence of leukaemia in the general population, one of the main concerns owing to the shorter time expected between exposure and its occurrence compared with solid cancers, does not appear to be elevated. [1]
1 person died in Fukushima, 0 in Three Mile Island, the next two worst incidents of all time.
On the other hand, 200,000+ people died and a village was wiped off the face of the earth in Bangqiao.
It's true that there haven't been too many deaths from existing nuclear accidents, but that seems to be more by luck than judgement. If we got a chernobyl-like accident near a major city then the impact would be off the scale. I live in London, and I don't even to think about what it would mean if London ended up in an exclusion zone (and there are plenty of nuclear power plants near to London that could cause this if things went south and the wind was blowing in the wrong direction).
I agree that would be bad, but fundamentally as humans what we do is take things that are unsafe and make them safe. Hurtling through the air at 1000kph in a metal tube is inherently unsafe. Thanks to engineering, it's literally safer than the drive to the airport - let alone the walk.
If a coal tailings pond unloaded into the Thames you'd have a bad time. If a dam unloaded on Quebec City you'd have a bad time. If the strategic petroleum reserve exploded you'd have a bad time. You'd have unlivable areas, you'd have cancers, the whole deal. That's not a reason not to do something that science tells us we've made safer than - and lower carbon than - any other form of power.
[edit] I could just as easily say: "well what if a plane falls out of the sky for no reason over the parliament buildings" and that would be bad, but I have no idea why it would - similarly I have no idea why the spicy rocks going to town on each other in the reaction chamber of a nuclear reactor would get out. But in both cases empirical evidence, testing and refinement have led us to eliminate the reasons that's ever happened before from operating designs and to add a ton of safety mechanisms to mitigate the risk of unforeseen consequences.
The good news is that really didn't happen. About 40 or 50 people died of acute radiation poisoning (that's a bad way to go). Many were displaced. The most common form of cancer that occurred as a result of Chernobyl was thyroid cancer which is 'almost 100%' [2] curable generally speaking. You take the thyroid out, and folks are put on thyroxine. Broadly preventable with iodine pills and also principally attributable to acute exposure immediately following.
Worth skimming the summary of the UNSCEAR report. [1]
> Apart from this increase [6000 cases of thyroid cancer], there is no evidence of a major public health impact attributable to radiation exposure two decades after the accident. There is no scientific evidence of increases in overall cancer incidence or mortality rates or in rates of non-malignant disorders that could be related to radiation exposure. The incidence of leukaemia in the general population, one of the main concerns owing to the shorter time expected between exposure and its occurrence compared with solid cancers, does not appear to be elevated. [1]
1 person died in Fukushima, 0 in Three Mile Island, the next two worst incidents of all time.
On the other hand, 200,000+ people died and a village was wiped off the face of the earth in Bangqiao.
[1] https://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/areas-of-work/chernobyl.h...
[2] https://www.cancer.org/cancer/thyroid-cancer/detection-diagn...