The Legacy of Chernobyl

[Playinghardball]

Twenty-six years after the meltdown at Chernobyl, the legacy of the 1986 explosion lives on.Belarus, 2000. (Photo: Paul Fusco | Magnum)

"It is a disaster that left a 30-kilometre uninhabitable exclusion zone, displaced hundreds of thousands of people, and still threatens the lives of tens of thousands," wrote Greenpeace on Thursday.

All these years and a triple meltdown at Fukushima later, the industry and its supporters have yet to learn.

"The nuclear industry still hasn't realized or admitted that its reactors are unsafe. Reactors are vulnerable to any unforeseen combination of technological failures, human errors and natural disasters. That puts the tens of millions of people living near the worlds more than 400 reactors at risk," writes Greenpeace's Justin McKeating.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/04/27-2

[Drsdman]

1. No new nukes! No new nukes! No new nukes!

[Egalitarian Thug]

2. K&R. So sad.

Here's an interesting site that chronicles the aftermath for several years.

http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/index.html

[TheWraith]

3. And people still obsess about Chernobyl...

Despite the fact that coal kills ten times more people, every year, JUST IN THE UNITED STATES.

So let's see, people killed by nuclear power over the last ~30 years: about 133 a year.
People killed by coal power over the last ~30 years: 40,000 a year. Just in the United States.

But hey, yeah, we really wouldn't want to overlook a chance to defend the coal industry.