Radiation’s toll
There is also much uncertainty about how many people might be harmed by a big nuclear accident.
At Chernobyl, two people died during the accident and 28 others died of radiation illness in the first four months afterward. (Some estimates of the early deaths put the number as high as
57 ).
Since then, there have been 6,800 cases of thyroid cancer in people who were children at the time of the accident, according to a recent report by the U.N. Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, with the number still rising. As of 2005, only 15 were fatal.
To date, there is no clear increase in leukemia or other cancers, or deaths from non-cancer diseases. However, various expert groups estimate that 4,000 to 33,000 premature deaths might occur as a consequence of the accident.
In general, the hazards of radiation are less than most people think.
Since 1950, Japanese and American researchers have followed 120,000 residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the cities on which the United States dropped atomic bombs in 1945 to end World War II. Three-quarters of the people in the Life Span Study were exposed to the blasts; one-quarter were away at the time. The number of deaths attributable to the bombs is estimated by comparing survival in the two groups.
Through 2000, 42,304 of the people in the study had died. Of those deaths, 822 were “excess” — probably a result of the radiation.
Nuclear’s ‘dread factor’
Many critics of nuclear power say none of this truly accounts for the technology’s hazards.
“To replace carbon pollution with radioactive pollution is not a healthy solution,” said Epstein, the Harvard physician. “Even if the events are rare, what’s happening now in Japan demonstrates how profound and long-lasting these impacts can be.”
At a recent briefing by Physicians for Social Responsibility, David Richardson, an epidemiologist from the University of North Carolina, said that “the unsolved problems of long-term storage and its contribution to nuclear proliferation” are two reasons besides accidents that make nuclear power unacceptable.
Future accidents at storage sites are considered by energy analysts. But because modeling suggests they’re improbable, they don’t affect the calculations much. Mental-health effects of nuclear accidents are part of the calculations, too, but the doomsday fear of them and threat from nuclear proliferation are not.
“There is a kind of dread factor for nuclear which is very hard to quantify,” Markandya said. He added after a pause, “In the end . . . if people feel really uncomfortable with nuclear power, then they ought to go against it.”
Loading...
Comments