Chernobyl revisited

[Theres]

it's been sixteen years (!) since the worst nuclear accident in history.
it is estimated that thousands eventually died as a result of the series of unfortunate events which occurred that day.
milk and beef from the Ukraine, as well as Poland and other areas in the fallout zone, and reindeer from Finland (a major part of their diet) were tainted and are still banned from sale (although they undoudtedly show up on the black market!).

i remember going to see the movie 'China Syndrome' with a friend when it first came out back in '79. afterwards he said "it was an interesting concept for a movie, but something like that could never REALLY happen. too many safeguards." it was only a few weeks later that the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear powerplant in Pennsylvania occurred! and as scarey as that was, it was very minor compared to Chernobyl.

the mad rush to build as many of these things as possible slowed dramatically after these events, and the pressure from public protests against them.
(and all of the mad scientists put out of work are now employed by the bio-engineering companies! - lol)

here's more...
http://www.thehistorychannel.com/tdih/index.html

[Calixto]

Yes, well, if TMI had been built without a containment dome like the RMBK reactors in the old CCCP, even that minor accident would have spewed radioactive debris everywhere in a far worse scale than actually happened.

I personally am glad we have our containment domes to keep our accidents contained.

The problem with the estimates of deaths from Chernobyl and its radioactive fall out is that the old CCCP has unusually high cancer rates any way due to old accidents at their nuclear weapons plants (they actually spilled high level waste into open ponds !!), and very high pollution levels (scrubbers? What are those?). Additionally other factors contribute to a horribly low life expectancy rate... Too much statistical noise.

I'd love to see some of the Helium cooled, low power density reactors go online, or those Swedish ones submerged in a large pool of emergency coolant...they make core meltdown virtually impossible, if not actually impossible (due to physical laws not some jerryrigged safety system). Our reactors are scaled up Nuclear Submarine cores, and so have so much power density that if the coolant doesn't flow through it it will overheat and melt.

HTGRS...a much safer alternative to the old ones.