Chernobyl at Forty

Today marks forty years since that fateful night at reactor four of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, and what would become history’s worst nuclear accident. As the news media keeps recounting the events, a new report by the Anthropocene Institute brings much-needed perspective as it points out that the number of premature deaths would have been at least ten times higher had Chernobyl been a fully operational coal power plant. Though less spectacular, hundreds of thousands of people die every year from fine particulate pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels, yet none of these deaths seem to inspire HBO documentaries or sustained public outrage. Having been to Pripyat myself back in 2016, I am not trying to trivialize the human tragedy but, given the urgency of climate change, irrational fear of nuclear energy may ultimately prove far more dangerous than radiation itself.