Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by iso1631 2114 days ago
Fukushima killed 0 people. The evacuation has 2,000 deaths attributed to it.

In comparison the Earthquake and Tsunami killed 15,000 people.

Even setting aside the global effects of climate change, local air polution from coal burning kills 20,000 people a year in Europe alone [0], and 13,000 in the U.S. [1]

[0] http://www.env-health.org/IMG/pdf/heal_report_the_unpaid_hea...

[1] https://www.catf.us/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/CATF_Pub_TheT...

3 comments

> Fukushima killed 0 people. The evacuation has 2,000 deaths attributed to it.

Why do you think that distinction is important? It's like saying that bikes don't kill people, only the hard surfaces you fall on when you crash do.

Because that's not a problem with nuclear power plants per se, more a problem with chaotically evacuating after a massive tsumani has destroyed mass amounts of infrastructure and killed thousands of people

That type of evacuation in circumstances without the tsunami would not have lead to 2,000 deaths.

> Fukushima killed 0 people

We could repeat this as many times as we want, but will be still a false statement.

If disinformation will continue to be the standard solution for managing all nuclear challenges, we are not ready for an adult discussion about it. Therefore nobody should be allowed to use this technology until we mature as species and we'll be able to focus in the real issues.

How many people did Fukishima kill then?
The answer for this question will not be available until the last Fukushima radiation will decay. Ask again in 100 years.

But in the meanwhile, I'll gave you something to meditate about. After the first 10 months baby mortality increased suddenly in the areas affected by radiation (and only in those areas). More than 1000 newborn died en excess with respect to the areas not affected. I assume that not all of those were evacuated, so evacuation is not the problem here.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5044925/

Surprise, surprise, human foetuses are very sensitive to even low "safe?" doses of radiation, leading to miscarriages or lack of inner organs in non-viable newborns.

So, if those babies weren't fu*d by Fukushima, how would you explain that? With this information in mind, do you still consider that areas with and without radiation are equally safe?

Similar thing [1] happened in Berlin 9 months after Chernobyl. More babies than usual/expected were born with Trisomy 21.

[1] https://www.bmj.com/content/309/6948/158.full

Actually that is not what I searched for, but the only thing I found(after a casual search). I remember it to be more, dispersed all over the former German Democratic Republic which accounted for it, while the Bundesrepublik Deutschland didn't, or at least not at the times.

> Fukushima killed 0 people

Apologies, it caused 1 death. 7 years afterwards.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-45423575