This Is Not Chernobyl Part II

In 1986, Soviet secrecy was almost as much to blame for the death toll as nuclear fallout.

Many commentators, including Greenpeace’s Shawn-Patrick Stencil in The Mark, have linked the current nuclear crisis in Japan to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, but today in the Edmonton Journal Chernobyl expert David Marples attempts to illustrate the difference. A major one is that while the world is watching the Fukushima disaster unfold in real time, Soviet officials didn’t even announce anything had happened for 40 hours after a hydrogen explosion demolished Chernobyl’s containment system. “The enormity of Chernobyl as a disaster was greatly compounded by Soviet secrecy, which even 25 years later has resulted in a bitter international dispute as to the current and future death toll,” writes Marples. The mere fact that Japanese officials promptly evacuated the area and accepted international help means that the human cost of the Fukushima crisis is virtually guaranteed to be much lower than Chernobyl’s.

“The world is about to enter a no-fly zone for energy policy,” writes Terence Corcoran in the Financial Post, “a period where … all options appear to be politically off-limits.” Fossil fuels are polluting, wind and solar are unviable for now, hydro is environmentally damaging, and in the wake of Fukushima, nuclear is facing a backlash. “At the end of the battle, the most likely winner will be the energy source that is cheapest, works best and offers the lowest risks. It will be hard to beat the fossil fuels we know and trust.” Corcoran’s playing fast and loose with the terms "we" and “trust” there, the Newsroom would judge.

One thing’s for certain: For the foreseeable future, if someone at a Canadian nuclear power plant so much as spills a cup of coffee, you’re going to read about it in the news.

“It’s safe to predict that another nuclear accident is inevitable,” opines the Globe and Mail’s Margaret Wente. “It’s just a matter of where, and when.” She believes that China, which is building nuclear plants at a rate faster than the rest of the world combined and continues to be plagued by corruption and lax construction standards, is probably the frontrunner to host the world’s next nuclear catastrophe.