Post-Fukushima: Seven Billion Deaths Predicted

[FBaggins]

86. That seems to me to be a distinction without much difference.

The sources of these falsehoods (not the DU posters repeating them) are intentionally pumping that misinformation. I just don't see how that's different from lying.

As for the DU posters pushing the same content? Those of us on DU who watched this occur (including pro-nuclear regulars... but predominantly anti-nuclear) couldn't tell whether it was someone gone too far 'round the bend... or a troll... or someone mired in irredeemable ignorance... or actually a pro-nuclear sock puppet just trying to make genuinely anti-nuclear regulars look bad. We long ago decided that it didn't much matter whether they were buying or selling... or just victims of the sellers. It made DU (particularly our anti-nuclear posters) look nutty any way we sliced it.

Why do you think You own the truth about the hazards of Fukushima on the environment?

In general... I don't. As I said earlier, this is entirely different form the normal pro-vs-anti-nuclear arguments. In those, I do feel that my positions are correct and that I can back them up, but I respect that other DUers genuinely disagree and that many of them have well-considered opinions. It makes for a great debate (though occasionally testy).

This is different. Your next question leads to why

Why are all those examples you gave so unbelievable?

For the same reason that we don't need to be climatologists to recognize that the worst climate "skeptics" have no rhetorical leg to stand on... and the same reason that we don't need to give equal weight to arguments about homeopathy or chemtrails. People are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. The three examples given are 100% physically impossible. It simply isn't open to debate - and not a single real scientist in the field would disagree.

How did you react to Chernobyl?

There remains disagreement to this day re: how bad Chernobyl was... but there's no doubt that it was much MUCH worse than the current scenario. Containment wasn't just breached by primarily volatile isotopes... it was nonexistent. Plus the core didn't power down as at Fukushima's three units... it powered up and exploded. Then there was a fire in the core that lifted much larger amounts of long-lived elements like plutonium out of containment. Contamination levels were much higher over a much larger area and evacuation plans were dramatically inferior. We still haven't seen a death due to Fukushima's radiation, but Chernobyl killed dozens by acute radiation poisoning within days (and at least a few thousand after that). There have reportedly been a bit over 400 Fukushima workers who have exceeded the current 50 mSV dose limit (a handful by quite a bit)... but there were hundreds of thousands of "liquidators" that (at least by some estimates) had well beyond that level... plus tens of thousands of civilians above that level (to none for Fukushima)