Fukushima Deadlier than Chernobyl?

Fukushima Deadlier than Chernobyl?
By Arthur Hu
– May 13, 2011



How many people died / will die at Chernobyl or Fukushima? Well if you believe a website put up by people who make a living making nuclear power, two Chernobyl plant workers died on the night of the accident, and a further 28 people died within a few weeks as a result of acute radiation poisoning. “UNSCEAR says that apart from increased thyroid cancers, there is no evidence of a major public health impact attributable to radiation exposure 20 years after the accident.”

If you ask the anti-nuclear left, Greenpeace figures a quarter of a million cancer cases and 100,000 fatal cancers, plus another 60,000 deaths in russia and 140,000 in the Ukraine and Belarus because of the accident. A russian publication “Chernobyl” calculates nearly a million excess deaths occurred to 2004 as a result of radioactive contamination. Chris Busby is a scientist who shows up on 9-11 “truth” conspiracy sites like Veterans Today and Alex Jones’s Infowars, and was interviewed by Al-Jazeera Arabic (you know, the network where everybody left comments cursing our president, and wishing that Bin Laden meet his maker as a lion and a blessed martyr) on his study of the good people of Falluja (the town that gave our Marines such an explosive welcome) concluding that “”Falluja is Worse Than Hiroshima”. He told Russian Today (another 9-11 truth outlet making a killing on the Japan disasters) that hydrogen explosion at unit 1 was nuclear blast. He figures Chernobyl had killed 1.5 million people and predicts Fukushima’s will be as bad or worse.

The Wikipedia page on the accident records 0 fatalities, while a NY Times reader asked “And how many people has the calamity at Fukushima killed so far? A million? Ten million? How about a big fat zero?”

Now here’s how I figure a death toll based on the few reports I’ve seen. This isn’t based on radiation, but on reports say of wind power where yo u count ALL deaths due to research, building and operating the plant, including the poor lady who parachuted into one of the giant props. One guy in the Daini #2 plant died after being injured in the earthquake in the overhead crane. Two guys who were missing were found dead in turbine building #4. The Telegraph had a report that six Self-Defence radiation team members were killed under concrete when unit 3 blew up, but I could never find a confirmation and it seems to have vanished from even that article. Other reports are that 11 were “injured” or missing and TEPCO won’t confirm any other deaths. Two were also missing when #4 exploded, but they have not been found. Worse case, that’s crane guy, 2 tsunami victims, 6 #3 explosion deaths, and the 2 missing #4 explosion people, or 11 people, or 3 confirmed, none from radiation.

BUT if you...

http://www.asianweek.com/2011/05/13/fukushima-deadlier-than-chernobyl/

the ultimate death toll from Chernobyl is to compare death rates in the years preceding the incident, to the death rates in the same area for some years after. I'm not sure how many were evacuated from the immediate area, and tracking those people, who would no doubt have been exposed to excess radiation before they left, might be tricky.

This assumes very good record keeping, and I have no idea how good the record keeping in various parts of the world is.

Something similar, I believe, has been done about the Three Mile Island event, but I'm not up on the details.

Right now it is too soon to say much about the death toll from Fukishima. Only time will tell.

Thomas Cochran, it is his opinion it's not as bad as Chernobyl, says its a 100x worse than 3mile Island but that Chernobyl was 100x worse than Fukushima.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x293965

Have you seen the BS claims that the fission fans make about fission being safer than wind and solar?

I think that is what the blogger in the OP is actually responding to.

3 nukes in full meltdown, re-establishing critical mass now and then, so they won't be cooling down any time soon. How long until the corium hits the groundwater? :nuke::nuke::nuke:

Then there are all the spent fuel pools suspended above this mess, with the one for #4 teetering and looking like it might fall over if there was an explosion or another quake. :nuke:

Then there are units 5 and 6, which would become unmaintainable if 1-3 blew. :nuke::nuke:

Then there is the really be common spent fuel pool. :nuke: