Chernobyl
In 2000 I was in Finland on the Russian border above the artic circle. I had a wonderful dinner of reindeer meat with a very dark gravy. A small portion but nevertheless an interesting experience.
Later that year. I had a stent put in my heart. It was a nonevent really. One or two nights in the hospital, I can’t remember. It was 24 years ago.
After that procedure. Doctor Milton put me on a drug test. Monitoring the impact of a cholesterol reducing statin. This resulted in a monthly battery of tests. These were submitted to my family doctor, who commented.
“It’s wonderful all these expensive tests, but what is the elevated isotope. Have you been out of the country?”
I told him about eating Rudolph.
“That explains it, the large animal. Nuclear fallout, which they carried for hundreds of miles. You ate a piece of Chernobyl.”
In 1986. The Ukraine nuclear reactor exploded because of an accident during a shut drill to practice failsafe procedures. They were running a Monte Carlo scenario where they would continuously develop additional challenges and hypothetical hazards. This procedure was to take place in the dark across three shift changes. Two people were killed in the explosion. 2 later died of burns.
These deaths differentiated Chernobyl from Three Mile Island and Fukushima where no deaths occurred.
There were varying estimates of the number of people who died because of nuclear fallout in the following months and years. I have read 31.
Compared to fossil fuel deaths, the estimates of the number of people that die on an annual basis, because of breathing airborne particulates is now over 8 million globally.
It is a case of perception. Nuclear energy is safer than we believe.
Now, let’s compare the cost of cleaning up a nuclear accident or fossil site.
The Shima Hospital, now a clinic, is built on the exact site of the hydrogen bomb explosion August 6, 1945.
The site of the Bikini Atoll atomic test in the Marshal Islands has few inhabitants from any population in 2024. Tourist divers enjoy the sea water. A excellent radiation insulator. The divers are instructed not to take artifacts of the sunken ships or they will glow in the dark.
In Woodstock we have three brown fields, former fuel starage builk plants. These site appear lost to future usefulness. Those addresses join the over one hundred thousand fosil fuel contaminated sites accross the country.
It seems like the population does not demand either one be cleaned up.
I am taking a blood pressure meds now that make me cough. Fossil fuel particulates will get me before the nuke.
