fukushima nuke crisis - chernobyl on steroids, page-35

Facts:

There were no million deaths in Chernobyl, nowhere near that. There were 57 deaths directly from the accident, and suggested 4000 extra cases of cancer [1].

This could have been less if it wasn't for the Soviet authorities who:

1) Did not authorize evacuation of a nearby major town for a long time;

2) Kept people in the dark so they continued to eat and drink contaminated produce, e.g. milk for example;

3) Did not cancel May 1st outdoors parade (a big ideological deal in the Soviet union where everyone has to attend). According to some accounts, those "in the know" did not send their own children to parade, but had no guts to cancel the whole thing. A lot of radiation could have been picked up during this outdoors event.

4) Almost all deaths were in the immediate response teams (e.g. firefighters) who were not even told there was radiation and were under impression they are extinguishing an ordinary fire. They had no appropriate protection gear and dosages were not monitored. Spare a thought for two volunteers who, wearing ordinary diving gear, dived into a radioactive pool of water to drain it and help to avoid an explosion (not to be mistaken with Fukushima's spent fuel storage pools which need to be kept full).

5) The only direct, significant and proven long-term medical effect was the increased rate of (mainly thyroid) cancer in some European countries several years after the accident.

Not for one second I am suggesting that the above is not a big deal, but it was nowhere as catastrophic as many other disasters. In fact, by orders of magnitude. The hype is enormous compared to the only measurable impact, effect on the environment and human lives.

As a side note, it is quite ironic, that the whole Chernobyl accident started from conducting a planned test on a scenario that actually occurred in Fukushima - e.g. they wanted to make sure that back up power will kick in fast enough to cool the rods after the main power failed. They was a 15 second delay before the diesel kicked in and the engineers wanted to reduce it by redesigning the electrical circuit. Needless to say, the test went horribly wrong due to combination of human error, bad design and unfortunate coincidences, not a 14 meter tall wall of water that hit them after a 9 magnitude earthquake.

References: [1] "IAEA Report". In Focus: Chernobyl.

http://web.archive.org/web/20071217112720/http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Focus/Chernobyl/index.shtml

Cheers