[Kon5ole]

>Chernobyl is the only accident in commercial nuclear history that has exposed people to large enough doses of radiation to poison and kill them.

This is not true, it wasn't the only and not even the first. Some examples are collected in this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_orphan_source_incident...

The argument is also an annoyingly common attempt to sell the idea that nuclear power is not dangerous because there haven't been worst-case accidents yet.

But we know they can happen and what the consequences would be, so it's entirely irrelevant what has happened so far.

Both Fukushima and Chernobyl are active incidents ongoing as we speak, we don't know how bad even they will turn out to be.

[free_bip]

This Wikipedia article seems completely irrelevant to the quote you posted. They're clearly talking about commercial nuclear energy plants, not orphan sources from radiography and radiotherapy machines.

[Kon5ole]

The list is entirely relevant - the article itself talks about radiation and spends half the text analyzing the result of exactly the kind of exposure that the wikipedia article has several examples of:

"There are cases of Keralans exposed to sand containing thorium; Manhattan Project scientists who inhaled so much plutonium that they peed it out; early British radiologists who worked without any protection from the X-rays they worked with. "

But the article avoided the ones that caused fatalities, despite there being many, many examples.

Why did it do that? Why cherry-pick harmless examples to argue that something is harmless when there are many, many examples that show the opposite?

The explanation is revealed quickly - while the article pretends to talk about low-level radiation being harmless, which is frankly entirely uncontroversial, it is actually using that to try to argue that nuclear power is over-regulated:

"the world’s international radiation protection regime is based on the idea that any release of radioactive material from a nuclear power plant is intolerable. This has led to regulations that have increased the costs of nuclear electricity over time to the point where it is widely considered a slow, backward, and ineffective technology. "

But the safety protocols for nuclear power are NOT based on worries from low-level radiation exposure, they are based on the known risks and dangers of HIGH radiation exposure!

If anything the current problem with nuclear power plans is a lack of respect for how dangerous it actually is.

Nuclear power has been allowed to operate with nowhere near the security measures it requires for decades. The realization of the dangers have so far mostly been discovered by close calls - the 9/11 hijackers at one point planned to hit a nuclear plant. Oops, nuclear plants worldwide were upgraded with security measures to handle passenger jets crashing into them. At least one.

Fukushima had bad reserve power. Oops, let's ensure we have better reserve power. The Sellafield site, The Asse II mine - Oops - We need better storage.

(https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/dec/05/sellafield-...)

We have gotten reminders of how lax the security of nuclear power is many, many times, but so far we have never had a worst case scenario. And because of that, articles like this one pop up claiming it's safe. But it's a lie.

The actual truth is that operating a nuclear power plant safely takes enormous effort and is so expensive no company can do it profitably. The cost always gets shifted to governments.

[Kon5ole]

The article claims:

"After the Windscale fire released radioactive fallout onto grazing land in 1957, Britain discarded contaminated milk for 44 days, thereby avoiding any harm."

This is also not true, the actual reports estimate 33-100 deaths, 90 nonfatal cancers and 10 birth defects. (summary from wikipedia):

"These deaths were attributed not only to thyroid cancer, but also to lung cancer.[74] An updated 1988 UK government report (the most recent government estimate) estimated that 100 fatalities "probably" resulted from cancers as a result of the releases over 40 to 50 years.[75][76] The government report also estimated that 90 non-fatal cancers were caused by the incident, as well as 10 hereditary defects.[75]"

It's hard to imagine ignorance that manages to be familiar with Windscale yet not know anything about the estimated harm.