There is no point in panicking. But withholding or ignoring the truth for the good of the public will only make it worse.
I’m not anti-nuclear, but nobody knows exactly what affect previous accidents have actually had on the general population’s health, so I don’t really buy the “it’s perfectly safe, move along” mentality. I seem to recall many of the same people saying NOTHING bad was going to happen here.
The bigger deal here at this point is that new nuclear power is dead for the next 100-1000 years.
“Nuclear power is dead”... only if you allow the talking heads to control the conversation.
Think of it this way, you will save more lives by banning and outlawing cars. Hundreds of thousands of people have died in car wrecks. They are FAR FAR more dangerous then Nuclear power. Are we going to tackle a thing wihch kills few? Or one that kills many? Because if you are going to do the logical thing, outlaw cars, they kill more people.
Now doesn’t that seem just a TAD bit absurd?
Exactly.
I should have addressed this, we DO know what health effects there have been on populations which have been exposed in previous nuclear accidents. There were NO deaths from 3 mile island. Chernobyl were less than 50 up to 2005. Cancer rates do go up, but we can and DO treat those forms of cancer successfully.
Now, how many people died in car crashes in 2005?
“Car Crash Stats: There were nearly 6,420,000 auto accidents in the United States in 2005. The financial cost of these crashes is more than 230 Billion dollars. 2.9 million people were injured and 42,636 people killed. About 115 people die every day in vehicle crashes in the United States — one death every 13 minutes.” http://www.car-accidents.com/pages/stats.html
Thats jsut 2005, a completely unremarkable year with regard to statistics.
Now, it is clear that car crashes FAR FAR FAR outnumber deaths fron nuclear accidents. Yet you are willing to accept that. Why? Because you know more about the hazard and consider it more acceptable. Really, please, do put it into perspective, realistic perspective.