Monday, December 16, 2019

The greatest industrial accident ever

Disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima get all the attention and drive (bad) policy, but Bhopal was a vastly worse catastrophe. Over half a million people were injured and almost certainly more than 10,000 killed. Yet basically no one remembers this. We abandoned nuclear power -- a reliable, low-land-use, carbon-free means of generating electricity -- for far far less. I wonder how much is fear of the unseen ("radiation is scary!") and how much is racism / imperialism (Indian lives don't really matter).

And, of course, coal has killed (directly and indirectly) and will kill (via climate change) orders of magnitude more people than nuclear.



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