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I stopped reading after you downplayed thyroid cancer. You say things like thyroid cancer is common and throw out a number in the thousands. Do you realize that thyroid cancer is rare in children and being treated for cancer as a child is not as dismissable and breezily “curable” as you claim? Perhaps not, eh? I sense a commitment to downplaying the impact on human populations. I get enough of that by reading the web elsewhere, I am not searching for it here.
Have you read much about impact on livelihood? Nah? Me neither. There’s a great vid on Ex-Skf featuring people trying to cope with the loss of land, homes, businesses and a way of life. Just overnight, their horse breeding business is gone and they have no place to live. The mass migration of lives, needless excisions through cancer treatment even while being exposed to radiation in food, water, and air. Trying to overcome hospital stays or leukemia while your immune system is depressed from environmental irradiation - all while some government flack assures you it’s really not that bad. Read up on the Ukraine, ask yourself if you’d think it was “nothing” to treat every member of your family for a series of illnesses and be treated as well. It’s not just thyroid cancer, its a host of other illnesses, some of which have no name. It’s people dying of diseases they would normally recover from if their immune systems weren’t suppressed. No - let’s not read each other’s posts anymore. Ok?

I didn't "downplay" thyroid cancer, I reported it honestly. It is a significantly better than generic 'cancer' and doesn't deserve the same reaction as breast or lung cancer in most cases. As I said, my cousin had it. He did fine as, statistically do most people. When caught early cure rates run 98% or higher. Treatment is also easier on the patient than many cancer's. And it IS common. As I quoted from American Cancer Society statistics (for all ages) 60k cases are expected in the US this year. That is more than all leukemias combined (49k). Just under 2k thyroid cancer deaths are expected. Their annual cancer statistics issue doesn't give a separate breakdown for pediatric rates and I specified I didn't know them. At least the high cure rates appeared to apply to Chernobyl's cases if the UN's report can be believed: 4000 pediatric cases and only 9 deaths. Perhaps my attitude towards pediatric cancer is unusual because my experiences made it so. In my junior pediatric rotation in medical school I spent time on the inpatient oncology ward. I liked it enough I took a senior elective to spend more time there. In that six weeks experience ALL of my kids were getting better, all were tolerating treatment well and several celebrated "end of chemo" parties. I was the good luck charm you wanted your kid to have as a medical student. And in 25 years as a Dermatologist I've seen many patients flinch at the word cancer when I know their skin 'cancer' has no risk to give them anything more than a small scar. I've also done adult oncology rotations and have seen bad cancers. I know the difference; I know many lay people do not. I try to prevent unnecessary suffering when using the "C" word.

I'm not downplaying the suffering that came after Chernobyl, I'm downplaying some of the predicted problems which didn't turn out to be so. We should learn from hindsight. What turned out to be the real risks of something like Chernobyl and how can we best minimize them? What predicted risks turned out not to be real or at least to be much less than expected? Let's not spend resources or mental angst unnecessarily; there is plenty of real need. The UN report suggests that much suffering and harm resulted from false (in hindsight) information and decisions based on it. We should learn from it and do better the next time, especially since that next time arrived in Fukashima two years ago. We shouldn't proceed based only on 30 year old guesses as to what might happen. To not learn from the past is to be cruel to the present. And don't forget worse things than nuclear accidents can happen. Ukrainians should know that better than nearly anyone. I would far rather try to live through what the Soviets did to them in 86-87 than what they did in 32-33. Stalin killed literally millions of Ukrainians through forced famine and the NYT won a Pulitzer for lying about it. And Stalin's mentality produced the fools that destroyed Chernobyl.