Posted on 03/16/2011 12:27:11 PM PDT by Red Badger
TMI was a cake walk compared to this.
“partial reactor meltdown”
I love how people feel free to call something that wasn’t a meltdown a “meltdown” by adding the word “partial.”
Not much gets past this guy Chu.
A quote from his statement summarizes it nicely: “we don’t really know”
Since the news media is all over the map here’s a good site for info
http://www.nei.org/newsandevents/information-on-the-japanese-earthquake-and-reactors-in-that-region/
TMI was a situation that belongs in the “top 50 of what could have gone wrong, but didn’t go wrong, shoulda coulda woulda and things might have been really bad, possibly”.
Chernobyl, ok, that was bad, and it killed 225 people or so, including near term radiation illness. Ok, how many things have happened since, that claimed far more than 225 people?
Nothing brings out hysteria, for less cause, than nuclear. It must be the complex nature of science, or competing interests of finance related to other sources of energy that FEAR nuclear energy? I suspect it is both.
Only stupids with an agenda could make this comment. Has to be a liberal and/or a democrat.
LOL more people were killed when a car went in the water at Chappaquiddick driven by a womanizing senator.
He’s Zero’s DOE Cabinet Secretary...................
add: then Three Mile Island
Since TMI was essential an non-event except for the media coverage and resulting panic, that would not be too hard for a major nuclear accident to be worse.
The average radiation dose to people living within 10 miles of the TMI was eight millirem, and no more than 100 millirem to any single individual. Eight millirem is about equal to a chest X-ray, and 100 millirem is about a third of the average background level of radiation received by U.S. residents in a year.
http://www.ans.org/pi/resources/sptopics/tmi/whathappened.html
Three Mile Island was a media event that got stoked because in the same week a silly Jane Fonda movie opened called “The China Syndrome”. No one was injured, despite the panic that it caused.
Steven Chu, the Nobel prize-winning physicist appointed by President Obama as Energy Secretary, wants to paint the world white. A global initiative to change the colour of roofs, roads and pavements so that they reflect more sunlight and heat could play a big part in containing global warming, he said yesterday.
Truth indeed, a media event that has become part of the false history of liberal America.
A few years ago, I asked my students to write down how many people they think died in the TMI “catastrophe” (as one of our text books labeled it without, of course, providing figures). This was a bonus question on a test. The average guess was around ten thousand; the highest, half a million. Only two people out of almost a hundred said “zero.”
These were senior science majors at a school noted for rigorous standards in this area.
First rule for government officials: If you don’t know it, don’t say it.
Obama searched high and low to find people with less experience than he to staff his cabinet.
This might actually be a good idea in the resorts of the Bahamas, Costa Rica, Cuba, Venezuela or some of the other tropical fleshpots where noted liberals spend their ill-deserved vacation time.
If you live in the sub-arctic or on the Great Plains, as many of us peasants do, it is probably not so hot.
Yeah but did anyone ask him what his NCAA picks were?
Even Chernobyl wasn’t all that big a deal. Michael Fumento comments (in 2005, 20 years after Chernobyl):
http://www.fumento.com/environment/chernobyl.html
UPI’s immediate death toll was 2,000 while others used far higher figures. “Late Word From Inside Russia: Mass Grave for 15,000 N-Victims,” blared the New York Post. Blame these perhaps on confusion and Soviet secrecy. But in 2001 Agence France-Presse reported the highest toll ever, claiming “between 15,000 and 30,000 people died” from the initial blast and radiation exposure. As to delayed cancer deaths from radiation, some nuclear energy opponents estimated almost half a million.
...
But a voluminous new report assembled by the Chernobyl Forum, comprising 8 UN agencies, shows not only that the accident’s immediate impact was grossly exaggerated but that even delayed cancer deaths will prove minuscule compared to the outrageous predictions.
The actual number of immediate deaths? Not 30,000 but rather 47 says the report. All were among plant personnel and emergency workers, none among the general public.
Delayed cancer deaths estimated in the new report? Not half a million but about 4,000. This though five million people received excess radiation exposure. Yet the report also admits that although there’s been plenty of time for cancers to start showing up, researchers are having trouble finding enough cases even to justify the 4,000.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.