I heard on the news this morning - several times - that today is the 25th anniversary of the meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine. It was described as the worst nuclear incident in history.
Really?
First, the incident at the Fukushima power plant in Japan requires the modifier "yet" to be included when discussing the relative degrees of meltdowns. But aren't the newspeople forgetting something?
The intentional release of nuclear energy in the form of bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 still have to be considered the worst "nuclear incidents" in human history. No matter how bad it gets at Fukushima, and it could get very, very bad, it'll be tough to exceed the damage done at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. No matter that Harry Truman ended World War II by nuking civilians, it was still a pretty rotten thing to do and no power plant meltdown could ever be a worse "incident."
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Are they using the word "incident" or "accident"? That's probably the differnce. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the worst "nuclear on-purpose"s.
ReplyDeleteOn that day, they clearly said "incident," which is why I felt obligated to say something.
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