according to recent reports out of the UN
about 4000 people will die (in total past and future) due to chernobal
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7951


> -----Original Message-----
> From: piclist-bounces@mit.edu [mailto:piclist-bounces@mit.edu]On Behalf
> Of James Newtons Massmind
> Sent: Wednesday, September 07, 2005 08:28
> To: 'Microcontroller discussion list - Public.'
> Subject: RE: [OT] New Orleans
>
>
> > This is the same -- hm, I'll call it tentatively "engineering
> > arrogance" -- that claims that it is possible to store
> > radioactive material safely for tens of thousands of years.
> > Just as impossible as containing genetic material within a field.
>
>
> There is another side to arrogance: That of assuming that we are
> capable of
> making a significant difference in our environment when compared to the
> grand and awesome power of nature.
>
> It isn't a popular point of view right now, and I know, certainly, that
> there are things humans have done that have polluted and damaged
> the earth,
> but it also seems to me that claims that we could somehow destroy all of
> nature and wipe all life off the planet give us rather more credit than we
> are due.
>
> I think we tend to have delusions of grandeur in some cases both
> with regard
> to our ability to improve the world, and also with regard to our potential
> to damage it.
>
> "Mother Nature" (to put a name to it) doesn't give a sniff what we do one
> way or the other.
>
> Life finds a way.
>
> There are other reasons why GMO's are probably not a good idea,
> and maybe an
> accident could cause horrible damage, but not to the extent that we should
> put our heads in the sand and stop trying. We need to learn, make
> mistakes,
> and grow. There are other problems with our food:
> http://www.themeatrix.com
>
> And with regard to storing radioactive material safely, how did the earth
> store it safely before we dug it up? What difference does it make
> if we put
> it back? Yes, it might have a shorter half life and so may put out more
> radiation, but if it is down in the earth or at the bottom of the
> ocean, so
> what? In 10's of thousands of years, it will just have decayed that much
> faster.
>
> I would be perfectly happy to have nuke waste buried in my back
> yard. Quite
> a ways down, thank you, and I would keep a counter handy, but other than
> that, no objections. Better that than breathing the fumes of fossil fuels.
>
> The overly emotional objections to nuclear power are one reason
> why we have
> problems with ports like New Orleans today. More nuke plants
> would allow us
> to import less oil and therefore not need super tanker ports as we do.
>
> I swear, there must have been fear mongering against nuke power by the big
> oil and auto companies. It just isn't anywhere near as bad as people think
> it is.
>
> Check the air quality at any of the major ports and tell me that
> it wouldn't
> be safer for those ships to be nuke powered.
>
> Even Chernobyl, with a single loop, no safety and criminal
> mismanagement of
> a melt down, is still supporting life. Moss, grass, wolves, dear, frogs.
> They live happy full lives. Well, not so much the dear who live with the
> wolves. Just not very many humans. More than 700,000 still live
> there... for
> now. And you can take a tour, just don't drink the water or eat the fruit.
> http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/chapter34.html
>
> http://www.chernobyl.info/index.php?userhash=10544300&navID=155&lID=2
> Of the original 800,000 people in the area, between 25 and 100
> thousand have
> died from the radiation. 60,000 people die in the USA each and
> every year in
> car accidents. I commute 1 hour each day. It could be argued that
> I would be
> safer living on a farm in Chernobyl. That would, of course, not be true
> because there are 115 million commuters in the USA so 60k is about 0.05
> percent as opposed to between 3 and 12 percent dying there. So
> I'm at least
> 60 times safer here. But still, people LIVE in the aftermath of the most
> horrible nuke meltdown to date. And they would do better if they
> would stop
> drinking the milk. Cows tend to concentrate radiation.
>
> Life finds a way.
>
> Stop the emotion. Look at the hard cold numbers.
>
> How many of you know how to survive an atomic bomb blast? The currently
> living survivors of the bombing of Hiroshima know better than to drink the
> black rain or to crawl into a pool. About half of them survived
> the bombing.
> They know what sort of a building you want to be working in and where to
> position your desks. They know were to go after the blast. They are still
> alive. Hiroshima is alive. 2 million 882 thousand people as of
> 1995. Up from
> around 0 in 1945. Seems to have recovered well in 50 years.
>
> Life finds a way.
>
> How much better would life be for the people of New Orleans if
> all this oil
> were replaced by nice, clean, nuke power?
>
> ---
> James
> http://www.massmind.org
> What do YOU know?
>
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