[vidarh]

Chernobyl shortened the life of a few thousand people, maybe - the estimate keeps dropping - over a 35 year time period. A few dozen were killed quickly. The rest are estimates of deaths based on increased cancer occurrences.

The reason for making the distinction here, is that while some certainly can be reasonably said to have been killed by Chernobyl, and the 4k number may well be reasonable, that number is an estimate based on possible effects on cancer rates over 35 years that have kept being adjusted down as the early high predicted cancer deaths didn't happen. E.g. there was a spike in childhood leukemia, but the death rate was extremely low. Not all of those projected deaths have even happened yet, and then represent often tiny reduction in the total life expectancy for people exposed 35 years ago and counting.

Notably, given the discussion here, coal does exactly the same thing - it keeps persistently, slowly affecting the life expectancy of everyone, only new particulates released keep being released year after year. And incidentally also includes uranium dust. Yet it's a lot easier to ignore those deaths because there's no single specific event for people to link them to.

[arcticbull]

Yep, agreed - and in particular, my understanding from the USCEAR report [1] is the majority of the cancers expected were thyroid cancer. That's the one, if you have to get cancer, you hope to get since it's over 99% curable. I went with 4000 (per UNSCEAR) because it's an up-hill battle to get folks to even hear you out if you suggest even that.

It's worth emphasizing the point that coal plants produce large quantities of radioactive waste dispersed over a wide area. Nuclear reactors simply do not do this. Coal ash is more radioactive than nuclear waste [2].

[1] https://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html

[2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...