Uh, que?

Let’s see, state-run Soviet nuke goes haywire, and since its state-run, all casualty numbers are suppressed. But you knew that already, so your endorsement of said technology is that not enough state money was spent on said technology.

Here’s a similar headline:

NASA Announces Plan To Bring Wi-Fi To Its Headquarters By 2017

So, please tell me again, why you think government is such a wonderful advocate? Oh, wait, I already know why. Thanks for your clarification.

The above commenters will all be surprised to find that I am pro-nuclear. Nothing I said in my 1st post contradicts this, if only you would have read it properly. Modern reactor designs, especially the pebble bed variety, are vastly safer and superior sources of electricty. We should build more of them, especially in my home country of Australia which has huge sources of Uranium and empty stable desert bedrock perfect for disposing of the entire world’s nuclear waste if only the government would ignore the spineless wishes of the sheeple and just go ahead and build it.

My main point, and sorry if it got lost amidst my incredulity at Warren’s whitewashing of past nuclear tragedies, was that there are always ultra-gloomy predictions amongst the sane ones in any controversial topic. Given that publishing media will always be sensationlist, the only time we should be outraged or even surprised at dire predictions not eventuating is when the newspaper actually invented the story instead of reporting it as told. Expecting newspapers that profit from headline impact to be the font of all knowledge is naïve.

I also didn’t think his analogy with AGW worked because the 3 fallout incidents were examples of what happens when NO government money is spent on averting possible dangers, and the actual impact was as bad as was predicted by the tree huggers (eg- birth defects, poisoned land, cancers). This is a somewhat moot point since crazy predictions will be published regardless of the actual topic.

Basically, you can’t prove the non-existence of Anthropogenic Global Warming by proving the guilt of mass media headlines. It’s a logical fallacy. I’m all for blowing AGW into smithereens, but try to stick to valid arguments. I’m questioning methods, not intentions.

Yeah, Chernobyl was a wonderful experiment in state-run high technology. Incidentally, the Palo Verde Nuclear Plant (local) has 4 foot containment domes, and even thicker base construction.

We don’t have that stupidity here. Too bad idiots like this OZJuggler won’t let us build more.

I guess what I’m saying is that environmentalists are morons.

Is there much point in arguing that true impact is not as bad as some of the predictions? For that will always be the case as long as some crackpot is predicting the sky will fall.

I also doubt you are suggesting that the occasional batch of pollution, death, birth defects, miscarriages, and lost farming land are all acceptable costs of nuclear power generation – all part of the package deal. You would surely be in favour of any course of action that prevented the reoccurence of any such incidents, especially if we can have the power with lower risks.

Now considering that I have *seen* the birth defects created by Chernobyl, such as a boy born with his brain outside his skull, and that there are whole orphanages of such misery, it is alarming to see you downplaying this nuclear disaster purely so that you can point out that the media exaggerates things frequently. There is no shortage of evidence for media exaggeration, and you don’t need to talk like a schill for the nuclear industry to prove it.

I actually wonder if you’ve taken this report too uncritically, since it only measures the number of people who have died without accounting for people with terminal cancer or other radiation induced illnesses, let alone the birth defects and untold numbers of miscarriages. These are the effects that a simple bodycount will not tell you, yet they are part of the real legacy of Chernobyl.

I guess what I’m saying is that your analogy with AGW fails in this case because Chernobyl really was as extremely bad as was claimed and splitting hairs about exactly how bad it was doesn’t help much.

-OzJuggler.