However, past military activities have released into the environment more than a hundred times as much. That brings us to consider the human toll of nuclear electricity generation. Even allowing for the poor record of this industry in the former Soviet Union, nuclear power has proved to be the safest source of electricity in the world. Chernobyl remains the only incident where lives have been lost as a direct result. Numbers as high as eight figures have been bandied about, from sources in the imagination rather than reality.
Most thyroid cancers are completely curable, and few are fatal.
In 1990, I visited a scientific research station in the Chernobyl fallout zone where their unexposed films were densely speckled by radioactive particles. The scientists vacuumed up the fallout, buried it and went about their business. The staff treated me to a picnic lunch out in the fields. Tourists now visit the Chernobyl nuclear power station and take lunch at a nearby restaurant. The Chernobyl fallout was generally less than the natural level of radioactivity experienced with no adverse effects by inhabitants of high background radiation regions of Brazil, Cornwall, Iran, Kerala and Sri Lanka, and even our own Kakadu.