The article Earthquake, Tsunami, and Nuclear Power in Japan in the August 2011 Friends Journal received a number of comments, including a request to explain why I used International Atomic Energy Agency’s numbers on Chernobyl and ignored a claim that 1 million have died already from Chernobyl. I addressed this (published as a Forum piece in the December 2011 Friends Journal), and then added an appendix in the online version to address all points listed in the comments. It’s sort of long. Go the article page, comment 11.
I was most surprised at how dangers from radioactivity in the areas around the Fukushima plant compared to dangers of air pollution in Tokyo.
The Forum piece asks Friends (Quakers) to look at ourselves (others may wish to do this as well), when so often we see:
• attacking United Nations groups (International Atomic Energy Agency and World Health Organization) and the scientific community that has not found anything to criticize in the results they reached on Chernobyl, and
• clinging to preferred solutions, when climate change requires so much more.
You can leave comments on the Friends Journal page, here, or here.
