Never mind the thousands who died, what about those who might perish in a meltdown

THERE's nothing like the prospect of Armageddon to cheer up the Fairfax and ABC catastrophists.

The Sydney Morning Herald splash yesterday:

Race to Stop Nuclear Meltdown. Japan faced an escalating nuclear emergency last night, with two atomic reactors in partial meltdown and four others heating up, as the nation suffered in the aftermath of the tsunami and its largest earthquake.

James Delingpole in Britain's Sunday Telegraph:

The BBC, unsurprisingly, appears to have decided that potential nuclear disaster is the single most important aspect of the entire story. Which might seem fair enough until you remember that in one town alone as many as 10,000 people may have been killed by the earthquake and the tsunami. Compare and contrast this with the two fatalities so far in Japanese nuclear plants. Perhaps this figure will rise but until it does, the coverage given to what might possibly happen in Japan's nuclear plants as opposed to the far greater and very real and present disasters happening elsewhere in the country seems irresponsible, misleading and overdone.

The Daily Telegraph yesterday:

At Chernobyl in Russia, a sudden power output surge led to the rupture of the reactor vessel and a series of explosions. Thousands of people were killed immediately but the total death toll has never been revealed.

United Nations Scientific Committee on health effects due to radiation from Chernobyl accident (2008):

The high radiation doses proved fatal for 28 people; while 19 acute radiation survivors have died up to 2006, their deaths have been usually not associated with radiation exposure;; several hundred thousand people were involved in recovery operations, but apart from indications of an increase in the incidence of leukaemia and cataracts among those who received higher doses, there is no evidence of health effects that can be attributed to radiation exposure; the contamination of milk led to a substantial fraction of the more than 6,000 thyroid cancers observed (by 2005, 15 cases had proved fatal); there has been no persuasive evidence of any other health effect in the general population that can be attributed to radiation exposure.

More people died from windmills. Caithness Windfarm Information Forum 31 December 2010:

Total number of accidents [since 1970]: 966 [with] 73 fatalities

Jonathan Green on ABC online's The Drum:

Was this the way it might end for all of us one day. A gleaming industrialised, organised, clever, rich, resourceful chunk of the first world, humanity's finest swept away by the simple inextinguishable power of nature. The lesson seemed so clear: that natural force would have its day and never mind our feeble squabbles or yelps of protest.

A reader comment at the end of Green's piece:

Not so. The great Kanto earthquake killed about 140 000 people in 1923. This earthquake was more than five times more powerful. If this earthquake had occurred in 1923, the loss of life would have been far, far greater - many hundreds of thousands.

Worst case analysis. Mornings with Deborah Cameron on ABC radio Sydney's 702 yesterday:

ABC reporter Shane McLeod: Perhaps if [authorities] were more upfront about what the potential situation could be and put in the context of what's the worst that can happen rather than how good might it be.

Caller Diana: I just want to make a comment about the ABC's coverage. The ABC's television coverage last night of the Japan situation is high on emotional imagery and low on fact. When Jeremy Fernandez was reporting, behind him were four images on a loop which weren't explained. They were explosions, huge dirty waves... I actually put my hand up so I couldn't see those images and I could listen to what Jeremy had to say.

Caller David: I noticed that loop and those images were 36 to 48 hours old. Let's get back to some analysis and facts.

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