Horizon, BBC2 9.00 13th July

[richardland]

Did anyone see Horizon the other night? They made a statement that only 50 or so people died as a result of the radiation released from the Chernobyl accident.

This number seems low to me when thinking about the reports over the last 20 or so years. Does anyone have any other sources which could coroborate or deny these figures.

They also stated that visiting scientists found no apparent damage to the eco system in the immediate vicinity of the reactor. I seem to remember a news report from a few years back of a reporter holding an oak leaf that looked like it was nearly a foot long. Can anyone remember this or have any other information regarding other examples of genetic damage.

Finally the timing of this programme seems very interesting given the governments' recent announcement of the renewal of the nuclear programme. Could they be linked? Your views please.

[jake-the-peg]

THis page seems to quote very similar figures to those on the Horizon program:
http://www.magma.ca/~jalrober/Howbad.htm

He claims these are from a WHO conference in Vienna 10 years ago and from a paper 6 years ago.

Nuclear power has come back on the agenda in a big way over the last couple of years which I'd imagine is why Horizon made the film. I'd issume they knew a government announcement on nuclear energy was imminant and pushed it up the running order to be topical.

[kempie]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaste r#Controversy_over_fatality_estimates

[tex8596]

If they siad that...it's a flat out lie.

Tens of thousands of people dies in the accident. The mutations present in wildlife and human population in the affected area is still present and very nasty

I'm gonna watch the re-broadcast tonight. If they in fact to state this, I'm going to send out a few messages to news agencies.

I agree with the plan for nuclear power, but lieing to people to get it is cowardly and insulting!!!!!

[boobesque]

i recall hearing that worms living in the chernobyl area grew to like a foot long whereas worms in the surrounding non effected areas were of regular size. i dont have my ruler with me but im guessing regular size to be about 15cm. thats like half the size of the chernobyl ones. wether this is fact or not im not sure.

[Dagman]

I've posted this before, it's very very sad and may upset some! http://www.magnuminmotion.com/essay_chernobyl/

[Dagman]

In addition, I'd like to say that the disaster did worse than kill people, it gave them lives of nightmares. Nuclear power is a dirty energy, polluting, unsafe, problematic in it's waste disposal, but hey, so long as it's not dumped on Tony Blair's doorstep or London then that's fine, just push it onto people who have no say in the matter. They can't even run Sellafield safely and they want to build more of them? Clowns the lot of them.

[buildersmate]

In answer to the original question, I do not believe the 50 figure. Maybe that was talking about the number who died as a direct result of the extreme and excessive exposure to radiation over the couple of months when attempts were made by brave men to cap the spewing reactor. The long term effects through people dying prematurely from exposure to a higher level of background radiation is much higher.
Dagman's (somewhat hysterical) response can't be allowed to go unchallenged. Nuclear power is dirty? Wrong. It is actually very clean, producing no CO2 emissions at all. The problem is in what to do with the reactor core when it is finished. Polluting? Wrong from the actual energy creation, right from what to do with the waste (see above). Unsafe? Probably - Chenobyl was created by cretins experimenting when they shouldn't have. Other accidents in the industry are caused by human error. Humans haven't yet perfected techniques ways of reducing the probability of mistakes to zero, and the potential impact of such accidents ARE acknowledged to be very high. [Risk = probability x Impact]. Problematic in waste disposal? Yes - no-one wants it and the huge lengths of time the material has to be stored before it returns to a 'safe' state means there will always by conflicting arguments about what to do with the material and no-one can 'prove' they are right or wrong. Tony doesn't care as long as it isn't in London? Drivel - even Tony cares about this. This is a national problem and Tony is trying to engage in sensible debate about what energy the UK wants in future.
More Sellafields? Yet more drivel. Sellafield is a reprocessing plant, not an electricity generator. Calder Hall, on the Sellafield site, was originally a small power station. There would be no need for more Sellafields, so don't link the debate about building more nuclear-powered electricity plants to Sellafield.

[boobesque]

i would give buildersmate 5 stars but unfortunately i cant give stars.

[Dagman]

Of course it's dirty, there's been leakage into the Irish sea for years, the Irish aren't too happy about it. I never mentioned nor insinuated Sellafield as power producing! Sellafield is a necessary reprocessing plant but it won't cope with all the reactors' waste that may appear (where do you think it's going to go?) so more will be built. I took your reaction to my opinion personally buildersmate, quite rude,smug and very patronising really!

[Dagman]

And where did I say Tony Blair doesn't care? I said not on his doorstep. It would apply to anyone in office (No 10 Downing St) at the time. Also, do you think for one minute a reactor would be built in or even near London, no, there'd be riots galore, same for any other major city. And "what to do with the reactor core" as if that's the only problem! you watch Startrek too much I think. Millions of gallons of water is contaminated each day, pipelines, machinery, all having to be disposed of or cleaned up at some time. I accept it could be a much safer, less polluting energy but it isn't when people cut corners, and they will. Co2 is the pollutant result of fossil fuels, reprocessing plants are a pollutant result of nuclear energy.

[Catso]

I think, actually, they estimated 50 people had died, based upon what they knew about the people directly involved (largely, those in the immediate area). And that was only 'to date'. So it wasn't absolutely accurate and didn't include deaths in the future.

Personally, I think they oversimplified that bit, and it may be exaggerated as well. Statistics can be used to show a lot of things!

I did tend to believe the underlying message. That the existing predictors said that 10,000s would have died, but this hadn't happened. I think that was the main point: the models don't match observed reality. Why not, and what was wrong with them?

Hence the new theory that the exposure vs cell damage relationship wasn't simply linear.

The programme wasn't saying radioactivity, in general, is harmless.