Radiation risks are less frightening than anti-nuclear activists while they downplay danger of other power sources

See ‘Atoms and Ashes’ Review: Anatomy of a Nuclear Disaster: As renewed interest in nuclear power grows, a history of meltdowns past could help chart a safer future. James B. Meigs reviews Atoms and Ashes: A Global History of Nuclear Disasters by Serhii Plokhy. Excerpts:

"But here is where the stories diverge. In the end, TMI and Fukushima were expensive industrial accidents that caused no deaths from radiation in the short term and, arguably, none or few in the long term. Chernobyl was an entirely different beast. Even as Mr. Plokhy presents the Ukraine disaster as exhibit A for the risks of nuclear power, he also lucidly explains why Soviet nuclear plants were so much more dangerous than their counterparts in other countries. In their race to build a civilian nuclear program, Soviet officials simply scaled up an outdated military design that employed a temperamental graphite core. The resulting “Soviet Reactor” won the prize for “the most dangerous method of making power using fission,” as one expert put it. Making matters worse, the oddball design was too tall to fit inside a protective containment dome. When Chernobyl’s Reactor 4 exploded, it simply blew the roof off its building. Radioactive smoke from burning graphite rose straight into the sky."

"Then there’s the question of radiation risks. Anti-nuclear activists have circulated frightening claims about how the radiation releases from TMI and Fukushima might cause huge, long-term increases in cancer deaths. But less politically motivated research doesn’t support those claims. Even Chernobyl—which released roughly one million times more radiation than TMI—hasn’t produced the predicted avalanche of disease. Only 31 people died in the initial accident (though others suffered from radiation sickness or developed thyroid cancer). Reliable estimates concerning potential total fatalities range from roughly 200 to a U.N. study group’s conclusion that up to 4,000 people might eventually die. (The statistical model used by those U.N. researchers has been criticized as overly pessimistic. At the time of that 2005 report only 50 radiation-linked deaths had been confirmed.)"

"For example, while stressing hypothetical radiation risks from the Fukushima accident, it overlooks a Japanese government report that attributed over 2,000 deaths, not to radiation, but to the stresses of evacuation. Given that radiation levels in most of the evacuated regions were vanishingly low, it appears that policies driven by fear of radiation were more deadly to the public than the radiation itself."

"he downplays the routine harm caused by other energy sources. Just a few years before the Windscale accident, for example, as many as 10,000 Londoners were killed in a single four-day span of heavy smog caused mostly by coal burning. Since then, thousands have been killed in coal-mine disasters, oil-rig accidents, pipeline explosions and other energy-related disasters. And that’s not counting the daily death toll taken by air pollution. A NASA Goddard Institute study found that, by reducing the use of coal and other dirty fuels, “global nuclear power has prevented an average of 1.84 million air pollution-related deaths.”"

"Mr. Plokhy wants us to conclude that nuclear power has left an unbroken trail of death and disaster, that “nuclear accidents occur again and again.” A more balanced account would conclude something like the opposite: Since Chernobyl—an accident all but inconceivable with today’s technology—fatalities caused by civilian nuclear power have fallen essentially to zero. Nuclear power isn’t just safe, but a life saver. Mr. Plokhy has written a valuable history of past mistakes, but not a reliable guide for future policy."