Don’t the Chernobyl and TMI accidents prove that nuclear power is too dangerous?
Actually, they prove that nuclear power is not incredibly dangerous. The TMI incident was perhaps the worst possible thing that could happen to a commercial nuclear power plant and nobody was harmed. It was a financial disaster, but not a health disaster. As for Chernobyl, despite the repeated claims by the press that tens or hundreds of thousands of people were killed, according to a United Nations organization, only thirty to forty people died as a result of acute exposure to radiation. While an increase in thyroid cancer has been observed (1,800 cases), no other increase in cancers has been noted. And the real tragedy is that those thyroid cancer cases were largely preventable. Had the government response not been one of Soviet Cold War secrecy, the risk of thyroid cancer could have been reduced or eliminated simply by telling residents not to drink locally produced milk which contained radioactive iodine from Chernobyl.
