[mrtksn]

I don't want to get into a death toll deal discussion but people killed by KGB and Stasi is just as low.

A politician here a journalist there, people looking at death toll statistics must be wondering what was the big deal about Stasi, Chernobyl, KGB, Fukushima and so on.

[martinko]

> I don't want to get into a death toll deal discussion but people killed by KGB and Stasi is just as low.

You cant be serious.

[mrtksn]

Please correct me If you believe otherwise. But no indirect deaths please, the nuclear folks don't count these too. No inconveniences, life altering, career ending troubles, those don't appear on the only "few died due to nuclear accidents" statistics too.

To be clear, I am not anti-nuclear however I don't buy the "Chernobyl and Fukushima are note big deal" message that the low death toll numbers convey.

[morgante]

The death toll from the KGB and associated state violence is likely in the millions, not a few dozen people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_repression_in_the_So...

[pmachinery]

That link doesn't mention the KGB, the deaths and executions it refers to (largely of Communist Party and Red Army personnel) occurred before the KGB even existed, and nothing like what is described happened during the KGB era (1954-1991).

[varjag]

KGB is the direct successor to MGB, which was spun off from punitive branch of NKVD, which itself was a reorganized CheKa.

Huge swathes of KGB operatives worked through all of its organizational incarnations. They did (and Russian FSB still does) refer themselves as 'chekists' informally. Their professional holiday is the CheKa foundation day.

[pmachinery]

Huge swathes of post-war German police, judiciary, political personnel were Nazi Party members[0], but we don't attribute crimes carried out in the Third Reich to West (or East) Germany or its institutions.

If you want to pretend the KGB, or the regime it operated under[1], was just the same as the NKVD under Stalin, then please provide examples of the same crimes (mass killings) occurring from 1954-1991.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braunbuch

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-Stalinization

[brabel]

> I don't buy the "Chernobyl and Fukushima are note big deal" message that the low death toll numbers convey.

Why not? What evidence is there to the contrary? These death tolls vary by a lot, but even the high end is quite low compared to fossil fuels.

The fear people have of radiation seems to be much greater than reality would justify. This causes very serious problems, like evacuating hundreds of thousands of people unnecessarily after an accident, destroying their lives due to mostly paranoia[1], as well as slowing down considerably our efforts to lower CO2 emissions (like Germany shutting down all its nuclear facilities even if that causes thousands of deaths due to increased pollution[2]).

[1] https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Japan-nuclear-sh... [2] https://grist.org/energy/the-cost-of-germany-going-off-nucle...

[mrtksn]

Because direct death at the accident is not what makes it big deal but the numbers are used to argue just that.

[orwin]

what is a big deal then? Unusable area? Mining coal or rare earth for solar panel already do that for you on a two order of magnitude difference at least (not counting detroyed montaintops and water pollution). Population displacement? Yeah, again an order of magnitude inferior to dammage caused by mining (this time counting water pollution). Not counting when hydro power fail: two order of magnitude differential just counting china barrage failure.

Would you dissmiss hydro power because of the barrage incident then? Because last time i checked, the death toll, the displacment toll and the lost land caused by hydro power were a lot more than nuclear for sensibly the same power production.

Is it waste that grind your gear? Yeah, speak to the people who live near cadmium mines where nothing can grow anymore. Also a Co2 surplus in high atmosphere last around 100 000 years (order of magnitude here). Compare that to the dangerous radioactive waste. Also, coal mining and burning cause the area around to be more radioactive than the area around fukushima, or French uranium mines. Weird, no?

You know why you really don't like nuclear power? Its because with solar panel, oil and coal, the externalities are paid by poor populations in China, India, Africa or south America. So its better for you (or me). Its because hydro power failure only happened in poor countries. Or rather, country you don't really know or care about. Italia, Brazil, China barrage failure each have death toll superior to fukushima + chernobyl counting displacement caused deaths (avoidable deaths).

[hutzlibu]

"what is a big deal then?"

You probably don't know that, but the radioactive cloud from chernobyl contaminated large areas of central europe.

To the point, that I still cannot pick and eat mushrooms out of the forest as much as I like and that every wild boar meat has to be checked for radioactivity and lots of it has to be thrown away. And that a generation had to avoid open playground for some time.

That is a huge impact from just one accident 34 years ago. Which happened far away from us. And also one of the reasons, why nuclear power is not liked very much in germany. Nobody wants a radioactive cloud on a bigger scale.

So I am not for turning all nuclear power plants off now, but as soon as they can be replaced by regenerative energy.

[mrtksn]

Lots of whataboutism here. In that vein let’s re-introduce asbestos because smoking kills much more people and doesn’t even insulate anything.

Anyway, the big issue is that it could have been(and still can be) much worse. it’s a scalable disaster with consequences outlasting human generations. If you need heroic efforts and enormous resources to contain something and there’s a possibility of that not succeed then you don’t want it happen and it’s a big deal.