Chernobyl.

Some people promote and millions believe the idea of a very high number for Chernobyl's cancer death toll. (See the 100,000 figure promoted by some Greens, and that's almost moderate.) Some others also adduce huge and horrible birth defects and other health effects.  Assessing the cancer toll, and the wider health effects, is complicated....... Read more...

This was a note written by Paul Seaman (www.paulseaman.com) as a July 2006  account by the BBC's leading science programme of the different ways of thinking about and accounting for the death-doll from cancer caused by radiation. It helps show why different experts come to very different predictions of the scale of, for instance, the Chernobyl disaster. Trouble is (for those who'd like a simple life) it debunks "LNT" which is the underpinning theory of the low estimates of people like the Chernobyl Forum, and does so by arguing that these are way too high. Read more...