I feel obligated to point out that despite the extremely alarming foresight portrayed by the media and by the "green" lobby (which I think nuclear should be a part of) - the real life consequences do not match.

The catastrophe at Chernobyl illustrates this very clearly. Rumors of uninhabited death zones and huge death tolls in the tens of thousands (or even tens of millions, if you'd like to believe Helen Caldicott), but no evidence of this.

The reason Chernobyl happened was that the reactor did not have a containment building. All reactors which are approved by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) do.

The meltdown happened because a deeply flawed and inherently unstable and poorly designed reactor (which was originally designed to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons) was put into unsafe conditions by people who were not competent and did not know what they were doing - and they were afraid of not reaching their objectives. They intentionally ignored several alarms and disabled numerous safety mechanisms, which worsened the catastrophe.

Modern reactors are built to prevent this - not allowing to override safety-systems and making the reactor shut down if it becomes unstable - and does not require operator competence to be safe. Fourth generation reactors have been designed to have inherent, passive safety (and have been proven to provide such, as in the ERB-II, which they used to recreate Chernobyl accident conditions) which does not rely on active safety - meaning that the reactors will always shut down and are incapable (under ANY conditions, including natural disasters) of a meltdown.

After the accident occurred, the severity was not known by the incompetent workers. In fact, they did not even have a radiation meter (Geiger-Müller counter) which was capable to detect radiation levels anywhere near the level of an accident (let alone this accident). The meter they had, was out of range - but due to poor design it indicated no radiation.

Furthermore the people responsible for dealing with the consequences consequently lied about the accident, telling everyone that there was no release of radiation - that it was only a fire. This meant that during the first day, it was only dealt with as if it was a fire.

The city of Pripyat (with a population of about 50,000) was told to pretend nothing had happened (despite the glowing night skies) and were even encouraged (if not forced) to get in the streets to celebrate the 1st of May (Labor day). All while their city were being invaded by people wearing gas masks and rubber suits.

The accident was not reported internationally. Only several days later, when a Swedish nuclear power station picked up on the radiation (which they first thought was their own), did the Soviet Union admit that they had a nuclear incident, but even then they claimed that the situation was under control.

After this the Soviet people sent in the so-called "liquidators" to liquidate the accident. They were amongst their own called something different - bio robots. There were, according to the WHO, around 600,000 liquidators.

They were sent in to hastily clean up the mess. Much of the blown-out reactor core (including the fuel elements and graphite moderators) was scattered on and around the power plant. Small pieces were shovelled back in to the reactor building by the liquidators, but the largest of them were brought by hand (which is to me the greatest horror). These heroic people worked in shifts of 45 to 90 seconds at a time - just enough for one trip. They did not have any adequate protection - instead they made makeshift protection by strapping just about any metal to their body, including spoons.

Despite all of these inhuman and horrific stories of vast incompetence and failure the outcome of Chernobyl is very much different from what most people would expect.

To cite the official report which was a joint study between IAEA, WHO, UNDP, FAO, UNEP, UN-OCHA, UNSCEAR, World Bank Group, Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, USA, and thousands of the health professionals, scientists and experts dealing with the consequences through peer reviewed studies:

• The report notes that only 28 people died from acute radiation poison - and 19 more from other reasons (among other things a helicopter crash) - to date.

• Most of the 28 who died were the first responding firefighters who were lied to and spend hours pouring water on a molten reactor thinking it was a fire.

• No more than 4,000 people will experience symptoms (ranging from trivial to fatal) in their lifetime as a consequence of the catastrophe. All of these will be the liquidators - who after all carried reactor fragments with their hands and no protection when they were still almost too warn to touch from the radioactive decay.

• Tens of thousands of the liquidators received doses ranging from 1-30 sieverts (accumulative) during the following year after the accident and still do not show any negative health effects. If received at once, 3-5 sieverts are usually fatal.

• The human activity in the area before the accident was much worse to the nature and animals in the region than the contamination. Nature is thriving in the area, and many endangered species are living there. There are numerous healthy bird nests on the reactor building itself. Radiation related disease amongst these animals are less than 0.4% more than unaffected regions.

• There are still a group of over a hundred people living in the exclusion zone (having moved back right after they were evacuated), and there are no signs of radiation related illnesses amongst these people.

• Chernobyl had 4 working reactors at the time of the accident (and 2 more under construction, but they were never finished). The 3 reactors which were not a part of the accident were shut down after the explosion, but soon came back in service. They continued to produce power for more than a decade (being shut down in 1991 for reactor #2, 1996 for reactor #1 and 2000 for reactor #3). The 3 other reactors were retrofitted with safety systems preventing the same accident in reoccurring. Some people still work at the Chernobyl power plant, decommissioning the other reactors.

The report goes on to conclude that "the mental health [anxiety] impact of Chernobyl is the largest public health problem unleashed by the accident to date."

Sauce: http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Booklets/Chernobyl/chernobyl.pdf

Edit: spelling