As dark as it is to argue about something like that, but Chernobyl caused many more deaths. Even the WHO predicted 4000, and that is one of the lower figures. This is heavily debated, but to say it was 56 is not even a base for discussion. The cleanup crews alone died in higher numbers.
Second: If you look at coal like that, you have to factor in all the deaths caused by nuclear energy, including uran production. That number raises fast as well.
Third: I never mentioned coal. Bashing against coal is a typical defence strategy of the nuclear industry, and something I see again and again repeated on HN. It's a very weak strategy imo: It is an obvious strawman, and many people who are against nuclear energy are also against coal.
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Four: No, it is no case consistent logic. Something does not become not a catastrophe only because another thing is a catastrophe. It might become a lesser evil (that is not the case here), but that's as far as it goes.
> Even the WHO predicted 4000, and that is one of the lower figures. This is heavily debated, but to say it was 56 is not even a base for discussion. The cleanup crews alone died in higher numbers.
The WHO number is number of people expected to die prematurely as a result of Chernobyl. The deathcount he gave is an estimate of direct deaths. They mean very different things. The WHO number includes anyone who can be expected to die sooner, whether their life expectancy has been cut by a decade or a year. It's an important consideration, but it's not in any way directly comparable to the direct deaths numbers.
> Second: If you look at coal like that, you have to factor in all the deaths caused by nuclear energy, including uran production. That number raises fast as well.
Uranium mines used to be bad. In most present mines the amount of radon miners inhale is no higher than you risk in residential housing in areas with high natural occurence of radon. Even if you went back to unventilated mines to kill miners on purpose, it would still cause fewer radiation deaths than fly ash from coal plants, before even factoring in the other major causes of death from coal plants.
> Third: I never mentioned coal. Bashing against coal is a typical defence strategy of the nuclear industry, and something I see again and again repeated on HN. It's a very weak strategy imo: It is an obvious strawman, and many people who are against nuclear energy are also against coal.
It is relevant because power plants do not exist in isolation. If you shut down nuclear, it needs to be replaced. None of the alternative we currently have for base load are as safe as nuclear. So if you shut down nuclear plants over fears about them, odds are your replacement generation load will kill far more people. And a lot of places the goto replacement is still coal or oil/gas, which are some of the worst.
Stoking fears over nuclear is outright immoral, given the consequences such fears have already had. E.g. the nuclear phaseout in Germany has resulted in continued use of coal at much higher levels than otherwise, to the extent that assuming lethality quivalent to US levels, the phaseout has likely already killed several magnitudes as many as all nuclear accidents combined, on top of the environmental effects.
Actually, the coal thing in Germany is interesting. As a consequence of the end of nuclear energy they did construct new coal plants, against the protests of the very people that wanted the Atomausstieg. But the funny thing is that those new coal plants can't be properly used today, because they are just too expensive. Energy prices fell that low, thanks to green energy sources, that those new coal plants are not profitable anymore.
Sucks for the cities and energy companies that backed them, but is a win for society as a whole.
Even without those new plants, Germany's dependence on coal has been substantially extended in time. And it's not just Germany - the shutdown has also affected Germany's ability to export electricity, and so increased other countries depdency on more dangerous means of generation.
The death toll from Germany's shutdown is likely to be in the tens of thousands before the baseload capacity is fully replaced by safer alternativs.
No, 56 direct deaths. Check the Wikipedia article.
"56 direct deaths (47 accident workers and nine children with thyroid cancer) and it is estimated that there may eventually be 4,000 extra cancer deaths among the approximately 600,000 most highly exposed people."
> Even the WHO predicted 4000
(a) that is an estimate and (b) those are classified as indirect deaths, not least because they are estimated to occur over a span of 30-40 years. Also, these estimates are hard because cancer rates in the area have significant fluctuation due to other causes. And these are the estimates that were revised downward with every iteration of the report (every 10 years AFAICT).
So 4000 is the best number we have and, given the history of these projections, still likely to be on the high side.
> that is one of the lower figures.
It is likely to be the most accurate one, and they have been revising that estimate down with each report they publish. The other figures are generally from organizations with agendas to push and usually without any actual evidence.
> to say it was 56 is not even a base for discussion
Actually, that is the correct number of direct deaths, and the only ones where we can be certain of the causation.
> all the deaths caused by nuclear energy...including uran production
So nuclear is safer not just than coal (which is the main alternative), but also than oil, natural gas, biofuel/biomass, Peat, solar rooftop, wind and hydro.
And yes, it is logically consistent to say there are no "catastrophes" (plural) when there is only one event that rates as a catastrophe (singular). And yes, scale matters. When you are talking about catastrophes that take thousands or hundreds of thousands of direct casualties, events that have 56 direct casualties are probably not properly rated as catastrophes.
And when you include long-term effects, it is somewhat hard to rate as "catastrophic" something that's significantly safer than rooftop solar.
As dark as it is to argue about something like that, but Chernobyl caused many more deaths. Even the WHO predicted 4000, and that is one of the lower figures. This is heavily debated, but to say it was 56 is not even a base for discussion. The cleanup crews alone died in higher numbers.
Second: If you look at coal like that, you have to factor in all the deaths caused by nuclear energy, including uran production. That number raises fast as well.
Third: I never mentioned coal. Bashing against coal is a typical defence strategy of the nuclear industry, and something I see again and again repeated on HN. It's a very weak strategy imo: It is an obvious strawman, and many people who are against nuclear energy are also against coal.
Edit
Four: No, it is no case consistent logic. Something does not become not a catastrophe only because another thing is a catastrophe. It might become a lesser evil (that is not the case here), but that's as far as it goes.