Know Nukes

It looks like nuclear reactors aren't as dangerous as we thought (seen via The Brothers Judd:

This hard-line stance was partly rooted in history. On Aug. 6, 1945, a US bomber dropped an atomic bomb code-named Little Boy over Hiroshima. The bomb detonated at an altitude of 600 meters (about 2,000 feet), directly above the center of the city and the resulting fireball, generating temperatures in excess of 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, swept away all of downtown Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people. Three days later, a second atom bomb was dropped over Nagasaki, killing 70,000.

The more recent meltdown at the reactor in Chernobyl in 1986 reminded the world of the dangers of the atom. The incident was referred to as "nuclear genocide," and the press wrote of "forests stained red" and of deformed insects. The public was bombarded with images of Soviet cleanup crews wearing protective suits, bald-headed children with cancer and the members of cement crews who lost their lives in an attempt to seal off the cracked reactor with a concrete plug. Fifteen years after the reactor accident, the German newsmagazine Focus concluded that Chernobyl was responsible for "500,000" deaths.

………

To answer these questions, the Japanese and the Americans launched a giant epidemiological study after the war. The study included all residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki who had survived the atomic explosion within a 10-kilometer (6.2-mile) radius. Investigators questioned the residents to obtain their precise locations when the bomb exploded, and used this information to calculate a personal radiation dose for each resident. Data was collected for 86,572 people.

Today, 60 years later, the study's results are clear. More than 700 people eventually died as a result of radiation received from the atomic attack:

• 87 died of leukemia;

• 440 died of tumors;

• and 250 died of radiation-induced heart attacks.

• In addition, 30 fetuses developed mental disabilities after they were born.

Such statistics have attracted little notice so far. The numbers cited in schoolbooks are much higher. According to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, 105,000 people died of the "long-term consequences of radiation."

Will the people who blocked development of nuclear power apologize?