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Comment by foobarian | Hacker News Reader

> Any remedy he and his colleagues come up with will be of keen interest to Japan, which is coping with the aftermath of its own nuclear disaster 10 years ago at Fukushima

I can't believe Fukushima was 10 years ago already. It feels like it was just last year.

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I can't believe that an earthquake and tsunami that killed 20,000 people is called a "nuclear disaster"

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster was caused by the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. They are separate, but related disasters. Despite the low fatality rate, there is no doubt that it was a disaster. Radioactive material was released and 150,000 people were evacuated.

Massive amounts of radioactive material were released right in to the ocean, threatening the planet itself.

Imo: worth being defined separately from the earthquake, and worth being called a disaster

If that's a disaster, what the hell is something that killed 20,000 people?

Also a disaster.

> I can't believe that an earthquake and tsunami that killed 20,000 people is called a "nuclear disaster"

It seems that you missed the part where a nuclear plant was destroyed by those same tsunami and earthquake. Everybody is talking about how to fix it since 2011, so it must be something big.

I think his point was that the tsunami killed 20000 people, and the nuclear power plant killed one, yet people talk about the nuclear power plant as if that was the only issue. This is kind of disrespectful to the actual victims.

> the nuclear power plant killed just one

Yes, I'm aware that some people will keep repeating this damage control PR stunt a thousand times, and that other naive people could even believe them and spread it, but it will still be false (and irrelevant).

Every time that we talk about Fukushima we have the but "almost nobody died" rabbit out of the hat again. We have yet discussed why this is false ten times and frankly I'm a little tired about this tactics of draining our energy making us to repeat obvious facts again and again until everybody quits the room.

One scientific paper predicts around 200 excess deaths eventually. A single percent of the death toll of the tsunami.

And there is only one confirmed death from the nuclear incident.

> And there is only one confirmed death from the nuclear incident.

There's plenty of evidence of increased cancer rates in the affected areas. That's never a statement made in good faith in the context of nuclear disasters, because radiation effects on the environment, including the people, have a very long tail.

You're basically saying nothing, while ostensibly implying there's nearly zero risk of fatalities.

Could you point to a peer reviewed paper that attributes QALYS lost of fukishima vs QALYS lost from the tsunami as a whole. Ideally one which also looks at QALYS from fossil fuel power plants too.

One $200,000,000,000 death.

Interesting that years later the sensationalist doomer blogs[1] turn out to be correct[2], in contrast with the common obviously false mantra of "there is no nuclear waste problem/safety issues"

[1] https://cuttingthegordianknot.wordpress.com/2012/05/02/houst...

[2] https://earther.gizmodo.com/japan-s-new-fukushima-plan-dumpi...

Correct in the mere fact that nuclear waste is being released into the ocean. Still incorrect in the sense that this is a significant issue worth worrying about. The waste mixes with the ocean water and dilutes to safe levels.

The Soviet Union and the United Kingdom both dumped nuclear waste into the ocean for decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_....

First, nobody said that. That is a strawman you made up.

Second, tritium is an extremely harmless radioactive isotope, probably the least harmful one there is. Releasing water containing tritium is absolute and definitely completely harmless as well, and a good decision.

I remember getting bagged on at the time for saying it was going to take 30-50 years to clean up Fukushima. We're 35 years out from Chernobyl. I think Three Mile Island took 15 years. And now 10 year out with Fukushima.

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