[radu_floricica]

You really have to put things in context, otherwise you get into the "think of the children" fallacy, where everything is worth the effort if it saves one life.

We die of three causes: cancer, heart problems and strokes. Well over 30% die of cancer. So this means some of those 200 will die of cancer before they die of something else (some of them will recover and live to die from heart attack later). This makes the new deaths a really tiny percentage, which means policy-wise it's hardly worth discussing.

[mbateman]

I'm certainly not trying to imply any policy prescriptions. I'm strongly in favor of nuclear power. But if there's risk we should know what it is so it can be distributed/compensated for.

I'm not saying it's not worth the cost (or even trying to discuss things in those terms), but I'm not convinced this outcome is insignificant. If this article is right, many of these people will die N years sooner than they would have otherwise. How high does N have to be before it gets worth discussing?

[altarelli]

The risk for the GE MkI was (is) well known, but physicist-socipath Seaborg chose to hand out the operating license:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4401744