Well, the WHO estimates of total casualties of Chernobyl were consistently and significantly downgraded every decade after the disaster as more data of the actual effects came in, so it seems like we are currently vastly overestimating the risk.
It now happens to be that the indirect, psychosocial effects of the evacuation and economic losses due to the plant closure caused way more total health problems than the radiation. We now see similar trends at Fukushima.
And no, that doesn't mean that radiation isn't dangerous, people definitely died from radiation in Chernobyl (not in Fukushima), particularly the personnel and rescue workers.
However, the danger of low-level radiation seems to be vastly overstated. The Linear Non-Threshold Model (LNT)[1] for radiation damage seems to simply be wrong, which is not surprising as it was never based on data in the first place.
That of course also affects how we should think about nuclear waste, as the idea that we have to isolate it 100% from contact with the biosphere is predicated on the LNT.
And as someone pointed out, if we actually crash back down to a Bronze-Age society, nuclear waste will be the smallest of our problems, whereas if we remain an advanced industrial society, we will be able to deal with it, better each year.
However, the bigger point about nuclear waste is that there is just so incredibly little of it. With BFR, we can probably start chugging the worst bits of it into the sun if we don't want to re-process.
In fact coal plants actually produce more radiation:
It now happens to be that the indirect, psychosocial effects of the evacuation and economic losses due to the plant closure caused way more total health problems than the radiation. We now see similar trends at Fukushima.
And no, that doesn't mean that radiation isn't dangerous, people definitely died from radiation in Chernobyl (not in Fukushima), particularly the personnel and rescue workers.
However, the danger of low-level radiation seems to be vastly overstated. The Linear Non-Threshold Model (LNT)[1] for radiation damage seems to simply be wrong, which is not surprising as it was never based on data in the first place.
That of course also affects how we should think about nuclear waste, as the idea that we have to isolate it 100% from contact with the biosphere is predicated on the LNT.
And as someone pointed out, if we actually crash back down to a Bronze-Age society, nuclear waste will be the smallest of our problems, whereas if we remain an advanced industrial society, we will be able to deal with it, better each year.
However, the bigger point about nuclear waste is that there is just so incredibly little of it. With BFR, we can probably start chugging the worst bits of it into the sun if we don't want to re-process.
In fact coal plants actually produce more radiation:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model#Cont...