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Comment by dublinclontarf | Hacker News Reader

Well in a worse case scenario, which is not as bad as chernobyl then the answer is no, they dont really have anything to worry about. Chernobyl has actually killed very few people or cases of cancer. The death toll directly killed by the accident was around 50, with 4000 affected by radiation.

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According to the WHO, yes. Other reports have claimed up to 15,000 deaths, and 50,000 people handicapped after the disaster.

McIntyre, P (May-June 2006). Chernobyl 20 years on. Cancer World, 40-44.

We have endless reports from international agencies not just WHO, in these reports they find NO evidence of any increase of congenital malformations, those reports claiming 50,000 people handicapped after the disaster are plain wrong. The reports also state that as a direct result of the accident 4000 children got thyroid cancer, of which the recovery rate was almost 99%.

Anti-nuclear groups have hyped up Chernobyl to such an extent that many people have an irrational fear of nuclear energy.

  http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/en/

http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/IAEA_Pub1239...

http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/chernobyl_di...

http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2006/9241594179_eng.pd...

http://www.unscear.org/docs/reports/annexj.pdf

http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub1239_web.pd...

http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/statements/2005/ebsp2005n008....

Those statistics are bullshit. I agree that people have irrational fears about nukes but quoting back bogus stats at them doesn't really help. We'll never have good data about Chernobyl because the autocratic Soviet government not only made it impossible to obtain at the time actively suppressed info to spin the global media and to keep the affected population calm and controllable. There is a large body of evidence that hundreds of thousands of people were 'affected' by the radiation. Given that tracking the effects of radiation exposure is challenging under the best of circumstances, will never know how many or to what extent. But we can definitely say that those WHO numbers are garbage, and it strains the imagination to think the real numbers aren't a lot worse.

Wow is that conspiracy theory talk, you have any facts to back that up?

We have endless reports from international agencies. Cover-up? I doubt it. Ukraine and Belarus want aid and help, have no interest in covering up, and it’s difficult to believe in an international nuclear industry driven cover-up taking in all those UN agencies.

What did these agencies say? Read for yourself,

http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/en/

http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/IAEA_Pub1239...

http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/chernobyl_di...

http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2006/9241594179_eng.pd...

http://www.unscear.org/docs/reports/annexj.pdf

http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub1239_web.pd...

http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/statements/2005/ebsp2005n008....

and so on, the list really is endless, you can click through for hours.

What is this "large body of evidence" you speak of? It would be nice to have some reports by reputable scientists but all you've done is spew conspiracy hystaria.

How are you going to have facts when they were destroyed?

Ugh, just for the historical record: no, it is not "conspiracy theory talk". It's the simple observation that without reasonably accurate data, valid analysis cannot be done. We don't have most of the data pertaining to Chernobyl, and we never will. That is mainly because the USSR was a totalitarian state with rigorous information control systems, and it didn't like to be embarrassed by its nuclear oopsie-daisy.

Good scientists--those of the WHO included--do their best with what data they have, and don't make claims that can't be backed up by data. Because there isn't enough data to support it, there will never be a comprehensive scientific analysis of the real impact of the Chernobyl event... at least until we get some kind of time machine tech.

Until then, you can't KNOW the impact of Chernobyl. Sorry, but you just have to GUESS. I realize that makes a lot of people uncomfortable, but that's how life works a lot of the time.

So my point wasn't "I know the real Chernobyl outcome in its entirety! It was baaaaad, man!" It was, "nobody knows the real Chernobyl outcome; we only know some partial results that we've been able to piece together, mostly many years after the fact from inconsistent data." (And that my personal hunch is that there was probably a lot of negative impact to humans which could not be captured in reports such as the ones you cite.)

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