Alternative Energy Confusion 558
pcnetworx1 writes "New York State is starting to get crunched for electricity. While other states may just say 'pop a couple more coal/oil/natural gas/nuclear power plants down', NY has decided to take the green route. NY State wants to get more power by strategically placing windmill powerplants in upstate NY to help the grid. While getting a dedicated power plant placed on your property for FREE (and being paid $3,000 a year per tower) may sounds good to some Slashdotters, the citizens in upstate NY still need some education in the safety of alternative energy."
Use less energy (Score:5, Insightful)
Things change (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that once this farm is built, people will discover they like lower taxes and cleaner air. I suspect that the "science" mentioned in the article is mere pseudo-science anyway. I have no idea how a bunch of rotating blades could do as much damage to the human body as the fumes from coal and oil burning. (Note: I assume the human body does not actually come into contact with the blades)
WTF (Score:5, Insightful)
What the hell kind of stupidity is going on here? I used to think that all of the inbreeding was occuring in rural states - but this has got to be the biggest level of stupidity ever. And like my daddy used to say, I can abide a dumb person - that's just an ignorant one.
These people are stupid - which means the inability to learn.
(Sigh.) So, uh, any space up in Canada?
Re:Use less energy (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, that situation may very well change, if they do not get their act together. Then, like any other scarce resource, electricity will become very wisely efficiently allocated by the market.
Simple Economics (Score:2, Insightful)
People making green choices should be compensated for that in the pocketbook... and people will therefore do it!
*Scratches Head* (Score:5, Insightful)
Uhhh, ok... so, I'm all for wind farming. It's cheap and competitive and safe. The NIMBYers (including those in my home state of Massachusetts) need to start considering their alternatives WRT coal, gas, and nuclear. Which would *you* prefer nearby, and how much do you want to pay for electricity? But when I read the term "education" used in this context, it just drives me up the wall. It's as if by being "educated" I would -- of course -- agree with the proposition at hand. IOW: The reframe of using the term "education" in the context of whatever agenda happens to be yours has now become cliché. *shrug*
not a very good analogy (Score:3, Insightful)
People can't have their cake and eat it too! (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Wind turbines make the same noises as Nazi troops torturing Jews? WTF??
2. Wind turbines causing women to have multiple menstrual cycles a month?
Come on. The real issue is that these people think wind turbines will decrease their property value. They don't have to make up shit like this. Especially if you compare the health effects of what would be built instead of wind turbines...probably coal power plants, which would be far worse health wise.
That being said, wind power is definitely inconsistent. From what I've heard about Denmark, which has the most wind power per capita in the world, most Danes are so untrusting of the quality of their electricity that they wouldn't even think about powering something without a UPS, otherwise they'd fry their electronics. Can any Danes back that up?
To be fair... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of COURSE the news outlets are going to interview the squeaky wheels. Sells more copies.
I imagine in any population, you can find 5% who are against something, no matter how good an idea it may be.
That 5% will get pushed aside, so that the rest of us can get on with things.
Importance of Land. (Score:3, Insightful)
Makes sense for a few MW in a hurry (Score:4, Insightful)
If you want a big steam turbine or several of them you have to order it years before you need it, and then it takes a long time to build all of the other infrastructure that turns it into a power station. If you go nuclear you have a choice between an expensive white elephant or becoming a pioneer with a full scale version of one of the more promising prototypes out there - so unless you have many years (more than a term of government certainly) you can forget about it.
There are several downsides of wind. With that small unit size the price per MW is high. Maintainance shedules are short (around 1 year vs 5 years for thermal plants) - but once again if you have a lot of small units you can afford to have a few down at any time. Wind isn't reliable, but paired with a thermal or hydro station that can do reasonably quick changes to load (sorry nuclear guys - this is your weak point) and control system like we've had for decades that isn't really a problem. Compare it to a solar water heater - it had a secondary heat source for those times when there isn't enough sun - so you have wind to save on oil or coal fuel costs.
Another quick fix solution is gas turbines. These are usually similar to jet engines driving generators and they aren't much cheaper than wind. Wind scales a bit (you can make big windmills and bring the price per MW down a bit) while photovoltaics don't - double the area of photovoltaics and you only get twice the power - which is why the nuclear crowd like to use it as a comparison because anything else built big enough is going to outstrip it at some point.
All of the above ignores CO2 - and if you consider it then that makes gas turbines less of an option. Nuclear in the short term would only work if someone parks a submarine nearby - everything that uses a large scale to get the efficiency up will require a lot of planning and constuction time.
Always naysayers (Score:4, Insightful)
Upstate NY (Score:5, Insightful)
Politics are on the lips of just about every person residing in upstate, as far as I can see. I couldn't go down from my office to get a coffee in Collegetown without overhearing at least 2 or 3 townies discussing politics if I wanted to.
It's also a fertile breeding ground for rather furious debate about such things. The Socialist party has a strong presence here (seriously, and they're proud to be Socialist). The town prints 2 forms of currency to be used in addition to US currency, City Bucks and Ithaca Hours.
So, to hear people talking about building wind farms in upstate is unsurprising. People have been talking about that for quite a while.
The flip side, however, is that you can always hear opponents of such actions. For instance, Cornell University does its cooling with water from the Cayuga River. We're not talking about dumping hot water into the river. Cold water from the Cayuga is pumped through campus buildings to cool them, reducing the amount of energy required by the campus. As far as sustainable, environmentally sound solutions are concenred, it's probably one of the cleanest ways to do it. It's definately pushing the curve a bit and showing that such solutions are viable.
This solution has vocal opponents as well.
To be brief, you can find just about any statement, as long as it's left-wing, that you want in upstate, and, according to people who've lived her longer than I, quite a few right wing ones too if you look hard enough. It's just the nature of upstate. People like politics.
Re:Use less energy (Score:3, Insightful)
On a larger scale, I think in the US government should follow Japan's example with things like the '70,000 roofs program', serious research funding. There's a lot of vacant roof space in downtown, malls, etc.
Re:Legalities will be the downfall of America? (Score:2, Insightful)
Its called responsibility.
People or companies must be held responsible for thier actions.
While you or I wouldnt allow our factory full of workers to get face cancer just so we can make an extra 7 dollars a day per person , not everyone has the same principles.
The people calling for tort reform are the same people that want that extra 7 dollars a day.
Be very wary of someone that wants laws to be changed to alleviate responsibility.
Re:Things change (Score:3, Insightful)
Much of upstate NY is really rural and many people can still remember how difficult it was to get on the grid and some people still aren't. When the electric co tells you for decades that you're too far for them to pull a line to connect you, it is understandable that they resist when they finally want to do so just so they can connect the windmills that they want to install on your neigbors hill.
Lastly, don't forget that this is pretty close to Amish country. These people are no strangers to wanting to live lives unspoiled by modern technology.
From TFA (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wind energy is great, but ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Pseudoscience (Score:3, Insightful)
Getting too close to intense electromagnetic feilds for too long is a problem. The birth defects and miscarrages in a plant that did welding of seams in plastic sheets was apparently due to induction heating which raised the core body temperature of the women working on a few defective machines. In winter the pregnant women were given the "warmer" machines to work on out of misguided kindness by their coworkers. I don't have a link (it was in a forgotten print source and on radio) but don't just believe me - use google to find an authoritative source, and remember I'm talking about feilds intense enough that a flouro tube can run without wires once you get it started.
People got way too paranoid because they don't understand intensity - it is a real effect but you'd have to do something stupid like live on the top floor of a house directly under a major line to have anything to justify that paranoia from what I've read. Those monkeys in Brazil that were effected decades back and started the whole thing off slept close to the wires.
It doesn't help that working out what makes people sick can be hard to determine. A place near where I grew up had very high rates of childhood asthma - but there are a wide range of industries there from cattleyards to plucking chickens to petrochemicals as well as most of the housing estate using fly ash and mildly radioactive mineral sand as fill and the park being a former dump. Even with all this and the possibility of pollen from nearby bushland and swamp the large transmission lines that converge at a major distribution centre nearby was held up as the possible culprit by some - because they are so easy to see and you can hear them humming. In the end the problem reduced, some of the smellier industries have moved elsewhere (meat rendering stinks) and the transmission lines take more load than before.
Re:Use less energy (Score:2, Insightful)
This serves to confirm my suspicion about "alternative energy" wackos. Home lighting? Monitors? Do you realize how little energy these processes need? You can adequately light a large room with about 200 W of incandescent light. It takes about a quarter of that with compact fluorescent lights, and even less with new linear fluorescent tubes. Modern computer monitors use less than 100 W each and most of them turn off when they aren't used for a while. The point is that if everyone turned off the lights in rooms when the last person left and they shut off all computer monitors that weren't being used, it wouldn't make a dent in electrical energy consumption. How much electricity do you think it takes to heat a home? How much electricity do you think it takes to produce aluminum? You can't just place all the blame on your neighbor for not turning off his porch light at night.
Re:Confused about confusion? (Score:1, Insightful)
First, since the range is 22-34, let's say 30, since the 1.5 million gallons is probably based on something closer to a best case estimate.
Second, they said 1.5 million gallons of oil, not gasoline. Oil is less expensive (and anyone ordering 1.5 million gallons of it is not paying pump price, anyway, so the $2.50 would be off). A barrel of oil is roughly $65, and contains 42 gallons. That is about $2.3M dollars per year.
That's 52 years.
Another way to think of it might be what how many years of a suppy of 1.5 million gallons of oil you would would be willing to pay $120 million dollars for. To make that personal, let's say you use 12 gallons of gasoline per week, or about 600 gallons per year. 1.5 million gallons of oil refine to about 700,000 gallons of gasoline. If you take your personal share of the $120 million dollar upfront cost, the question becomes how many years of gasoline would you pay $103,000 for. I would probably say 25-30 years if the gasoline supply could be guaranteed (which of course it can't be).
There's a million things that complicate this. Wind power credits, a cleaner environment, a lower trade deficit, maintenance costs for windmills vs power plants, substitution of fuel sources (ie, coal), etc. But it's probably a good move for NY.
Re:Use less energy (Score:3, Insightful)
I really hate the shitheads that worry more about their land values than about the world they are leaving behind. They want to have their cute little yards and attractive houses while they ship all the trash they produce off to somewhere else. I think the boyscout rule of leaving an area as good as you found it should apply to the whole world. When you die the world should be no worse for your having lived. Grid-tied alternative energy is really good for most people. It reduces your monthly electrical bill and you can have free electricity or even make a profit if you use less electricity than you produce (of course if the state funds the systems they should keep the profits). Using alternative power should be a civic responsibility like not commiting crimes and voting. Don't use more than you produce.
Re:Legalities will be the downfall of America? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's certainly possible that nuclear power could be clean with adequate plans for reprocessing and disposal of waste but thats not the current situation. Currently nuclear is only "clean" in the sense that we've managed to sweep the problem under the rug by cramming tin sheds (er on-site temporary storage facilities) with far more waste than they were designed to handle for far longer than they were designed to handle it. Sooner or later we are going to have to not only handle the waste currently being produced but also 30+ years of waste sitting in temporary storage.
Re:Why Not Nuclear? (Score:3, Insightful)
Hardly unique, coal releases quite a bit of radioactivity too. Scared of things you can't see, but that new-fangled science tells you must be there? Well, develop an irrational fear of radiation then, and ignore innovations like pebble bed reactors!
that will keep an area aglow for millennia.
We are talking nuclear power plants, not detonating cobalt bombs. But I guess we should just ignore that, because NUCULAR IS T3H EV1L!
Personally, I favor switching everything to biodeisel.
I have a better idea, let's burn newspaper for our energy needs, no one reads them anymore anyway! Seriously though, do you have any idea how fucking stupid this sounds? Biodiesel is for portable energy use, cars, trucks and so forth. There are about a million other ways to generate energy that are more convenient and appropriate, assuming the thing doesn't have to move. The article is about wind power, for grid generation, and the parent comment was about nuclear for the same thing. Or are you trying to suggest that he was insinuating nuclear-powered cars?
Once our cars are competing directly for the agricultural resources needed to feed humans, we will see the population drop to a sustainable level.
Yes, let's talk about depopulation. Since the sociopaths who always love to talk about how "there are too many people" are almost certainly unwilling to wait the time it would take even for "1 child per couple" laws to lower it sufficiently, they're really talking about more immediate depopulation. We have an entire galaxy to live in, but that's too much work, when really you'd just rather be some elitist aristocrat living out grandiose fantasies while earth's 200 million toil away, so that you can live in some gardenesque paradise. Oh wait, you're not an aristocrat, you're just some cretinish good who likes to repeat the words those elitists spout off, because it makes you feel powerfully snobby like they do? Gee, there's a surprise waiting for you, and I don't want to ruin it.
If not for stupid people, there is more than enough energy to be had, more than enough resources, more than enough space. Why are you so blind?
Someday we might realize that there isn't a magic bullet. Each alternative engery source has draw backs and we need to be developing them all. PS, I agree nuclear will be the long term solution. This solution has to be developed slowly and more thought than other alternatives.
Re:Why Not Nuclear? (Score:3, Insightful)
Other factors??
Coal power plants are cheaper and faster to build. They pollute more but nobody cares about that because polluting doesn't cost money to the company selling the power.
Nuclear power plants make ideal terrorist targets.
Nuclear power plants have to be built on prime waterfront property. That property is either owned by rich and powerful people or the state. If you take away state property you are going to piss off hunters and fishermen and farmers who will not want to water their crops or animals with that water.
Nuclear power plants can not be built on geologically unstable areas.
You have to shove the waste down somebodies throat. Nobody wants it in their back yard so you have to force people to live near radioactive waste. This pisses off conservatives and libertarians and also opens up the govt to takings lawsuits as peoples property values hit rock bottom.
It also pisses off environmentalists but in a republican controlled white house, congress and supreme court that's not such a big deal.
Re:Externalities (Score:3, Insightful)
Also of note is TCO and additional expenses not included in the "oil costs $X/gallon" figure. You can't just pour oil on electric lines and expect to have electricity; even that would require paying someone to pour it on them, transportation costs, etc. The oil (or natural gas, most likely, coal) is paid for, it's shipped to the plant (which requires more oil to ship it), it's unloaded by workers, stored until ready to be used, then burned. Under current labor laws the workers must be paid, and the plant usually belongs to a company which wants to make a profit on its investment (buying the land, building the plant, running the lines, paying the workers, buying the fuel, paying its executives, cleaning up hazardous spills, appeasing the environmentalists). So, in reality, if a barrel of oil costs $62, you're probably paying at least $70 for the energy it produces, a good 30% of which is lost in transmission over the grid.
When we decided to put in our solar system it cost us around $20,000 and should pay for itself in 7 years. It should last at least 20 years without any significant maintenance costs (no batteries, still on the grid). Windmills are essentially the same way in that they're extremely reliable with only a few working parts. Maintenance may be needed occasionally, but it's not like having a team of nuclear technicians running a plant.
What really amazes me is that a good solar system costs $20,000-$30,000, and the average home price where I grew up is about $500,000 with energy prices of a good $0.50/kWh. A builder could easily increase the cost of the home to $550,000, tell the buyers they're going to be saving $400/month on electricity at CURRENT prices, and make a profit. I'm sure they could get some sort of a subsidy from the state and environmentalists to make an even bigger profit.
Re:Use less energy (Score:3, Insightful)
Hence the problem - and if we use up all the stuff we can get at before we work out how to get at the rest of it, we're stuffed. So why not hit the off switch when walking out of a room, rather than just leaving the lights on?
Re:windmills are beautiful (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Legalities will be the downfall of America? (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a bit of trivia. "These studies concluded that the maximum radiation dose to an individual living within 1 km of a modern power plant is equivalent to a minor, perhaps 1 to 5 percent, increase above the radiation from the natural environment. For the average citizen, the radiation dose from coal burning is considerably less." "On this plot, the average population dose attributed to coal burning is included under the consumer products category and is much less than 1 percent of the total dose." "Radioactive elements in coal and fly ash should not be sources of alarm." ( Radioactive Elements in Coal and Fly Ash: Abundance, Forms, and Environmental Significance [usgs.gov])
I do agree that this is somewhat of an issue, though, in that essay [ornl.gov] that pops up everywhere now (even though it's really old), Gabbard does raise some points, especially with respect to long term accumulation of hazardous materials. But I'm not a chemist, this might be a non-issue. I've briefly searched for more recent material, but so far haven't come up with anything.
Re:Use less energy (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't want less power, I want *more* power. More power to do whatever I please, whenever I please.
Your desires have nothing to do with the way the universe works. I'd like to be Jesus Christ, but it ain't gonna happen.
If you're talking about making power so plentiful it goes for pennies on the dollar at todays prices, I'm with you. If you're going to go off on some environmental rant about how we should all live on tiny amounts of power, use solar heaters, and grow organic vegetables in our back yards, then forget that shit - I'm not interested.
Tough guy bullshit. You stupid fuck. Look at the universe around you. Cheap energy is a historical blip, and there is nothing written into the laws that govern the universe that says it should or will continue indefinitely.You sound like some stupid fucking libertarian, living life with complete disregard for the effects of their actions.
Re:Confused about confusion? (Score:2, Insightful)
Are you talking about your pretty "view"? Dear man, when we keep on consuming energy from nuclear of fossil fuel sources, there won`t be any view left in about x00 years. And you did mean the view with the trailer trash at the back, the little pond that looks either like an unkept zoo or a barbie doll toyshop, and the strategically planted flower beds that have no form or function other than dragging you out of your bed on a lazy sunday morning, to water them.
I also think windmills spoil the rural view. But when I think about the clean energy that provides us light and heat, and without damaging too much of our ecological biosphere, I think it`s not such a bad idea. Hey in the old times people had windmills too. They`re just a lot more efficient and clean today. 100 years from now, people will look back and smile when they see our sleek designs. But now it`s a necessary step in order to protect and to serve human energy needs.
And if you have a tower in your backyard, you can even get some money out of it.
Re:I got beef (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyway, in order to not have been born during the last serious nuclear power incident, you would have to be less than a year old (google for Thorp, UK plant leak). It's not the explosions people worry about, it's the potential leaks and where you put the waste for the next few thousand years.
Re:Use less energy (Score:4, Insightful)
This is strictly a technological problem, and capitalism is VERY good at solving these kinds of problems.
Fusion is the answer. Maybe not local fusion; maybe we'll never be able to do small scale fusion.
Our planet, however, convieniently orbits a fusion reactor whose output the human mind cannot fathom. We call it the sun; it produces more energy than the species called "Man" knows what to do with.
The only question is how we can harness it. The sun isn't a dam; there isn't a theoretical limit on how much of its energy we can use. Not enough ground space? No problem; Solar Power Satellites [wikipedia.org] to the rescue.
Not enough orbital space? Put 'em in solar orbit, setup relay stations. Efficency isn't an issue; once again, the tap is SO large that the solution is merely a matter of scale, not efficency.
When we are utilizing a non-negligble portion of the sun's energy output, we can talk about energy scarcity. As it is, the only projects we can currently conceive of that would use a non-neglible portion of the sun's energy output would be stellar engineering, on a solar system level, and even then there's more energy than we could possible ever need. We're talking enough energy to literally synthesize vast amounts of matter from energy.
It is an endless font so large that it does NOT fit within the human mind. It's project we can only talk about in engineering terms; its just to big for us to conceive.
Re:Use less energy (Score:3, Insightful)
But right now, our energy consumption/generation on a cosmological scale can be easily rounded off to ZERO.
True, but irrelevant and missing the point besides. It is not how much energy humans use on a cosmological scale that is the issue, which is obviously insignificant. The point is that the window of sustainability, the brackets between which life can and cannot be sustained, are precariously narrow, and if our short-sighted appetite for energy pushes beyond one end of that bracket then we as a species are fucked.
The only thing it takes is time, and energy. On a very large, very grand scale.
Which energy we do not have, and there is no law written into the universe which says that we must, or that we are destined for the stars. There is the distinct possibility that we are, in fact, stuck here for eternity, and that no amount of mucking around with physics will fix.
And even if we can, in the meantime we should keep our house in order. It's just wise.
Re:Use less energy (Score:3, Insightful)
I do not agree that an appetite for energy breaks sustainability. I do agree that we shouldn't be burning precious fossil fuels for energy, and I do agree that pollution is something that needs to be controlled. However, that's not a reason to artifically limit energy usage, nor is it a reason to prevent market forces controlling our energy supply.
Not all libertarians believe in pure laissez-faire capitalism; there's a reason we aren't anarcho-capitalists. I do believe that in some situations there are external costs, and in those situations the government should take some action to account for them. A portion of that needs to be paid by the electrical company; the electric company will pass that on to energy users, and that's the way it *should* be. The remainder of the "costs" of pollution should be picked up by the government. As a libertarian, I recognize this; I also recognize that the government will not efficently use resources to clean up pollution, and will most likely not efficently invest in non-polluting sources of energy. But that doesn't break capitalist economics; thats a *preference*, and in the end, the market is about expressing preferences. We pay a premium for our preferences sometime, and a clean environment is a preference worth paying a premium for.
Keep in mind that as part of my vision as to 'cleaning up pollution', the government should be investing in research and development to non-polluting sources. This includes research and development in nuclear technologies; as far as I can tell the devil of nuclear isn't so bad as the devil of fossil fuels, and it may be a useful stopgap measure towards renewables (primarily solar, either directly, or tidal).
If there's a better mechanism to interalize those pollution costs to the energy companies, we wouldn't need the government to interfer. But there isn't; and there are too many sources of pollution to accurately send a bill to each producer. Therefore, the government can and should implement a strategy to manage it.
None of this means that we should look to a miserly future in terms of energy usage. It just means we need to make better usage of our resourcs, and we need to develop avaliable resources as well as possible.
In a world of unlimited energy, conservation doesn't make any sense, and that's NOT a bad thing! Home insulation, exotic lighting, more advanced heating and cooling systems, even more sophisticated energy-saving technology for computing; these things all have their own disadvantages associated with them. Energy-efficent lighting usually requires toxic chemicals. Insulation disposal is a big environmental problem.
But at the moment, given that we do not have huge sources of energy, these costs are preferably to burning more coal.
Basically, I'm saying you may be making the same mistake that short-sighted robber-baron capitalists do. Don't use ideology as a goal; energy efficency isn't a goal, its a solution to a problem. There may be better solutions. We weight the costs and benefits of each solution, and pick the most practical at any given time. In the current world, energy efficency makes _sense_, and if/when energy prices rise, we'll be willing to spend more (and even do things like create more pollution) in order to achieve better energy efficency. If/when energy prices fall, we can sacrifice energy efficency, first for practical reasons, then for aesthetic reasons.
I do not believe the we should continue to feed the fossil fuel fires of 18th century (and onwards) industralization. We need a new paradigm in energy production, and we need it to be better
Re:CO2 crap (Score:2, Insightful)
> Kyoto mandates a reduction of CO2 emissions below the level of 1990
> In 1990 the French nukes were already operating for more than a decade.
> How could they further reduce emissions when their effect is included in the baseline?
My point is that nuclear power plants are not sufficient to solve the greenhouse-gas emission problem, nor they are the sole solution for grid-electricity producing devices. My point is to ask people saying that "nuke plants will solve the problem" to have some reality check in France (where, as a sidenote, the nuclear-produced part of the electricity produced in France regularly climbed for the last 30 years).
>> crap ("nuke is the solution for greenhouse gas reduction")
> What's wrong here?
Writing the solution is wrong. It is, at best, a partial solution. Please check my previous comment [slashdot.org].
And even on this field (grid-power) nuclear plants are not the best way because one has to extract then ship the nuclear fuel. And to do that one needs to burn gasoline, therefore emit CO2...
> Could you be missing the difference between "reduction" and "elimination"?
Nope, and this is not the point.
> Would you care to explain how a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is a bad thing
It's not a bad thing, but the "nuclear plants solve the problem" stance is bullshit.
> or how nuke plants emit greenhouse gases anyway?
One has to extract then ship the nuclear fuel. And to do that one needs to burn gasoline. But this is only a side-effect, I'm OK to say that nuclear plants use do nearly not emit greenhouse gas. Other, less dangerous, approaches can do it (please read the already referenced comment [slashdot.org]).
>> "the Chernobyl disaster killed 4000 persons"
> Another 4000 are estimated to die from cancer
I disagree. Your data came from a pro-nuke (UIC) comment on a flawed communiqué from pro-nuke agencies (IAEA...) which is not signed by anyone and is presented as an excerpt from a scientific report which is, in turn, only in draft stage and without any peer review nor clearly stated authors (i.e. this is not a scientific result). In fact this is plain BS. Please take a look at this analysis [makarevitch.org] and let me know. This is an abstract, the complete document is in French (sorry about that) but some non-French speaking people found it somewhat easy to grasp as it often quotes English documents.
Among other information (read the complete anlysis) please check this "Nuclear News" [ans.org] (very serious and pro-nuke publication) article about it (page 46). Among numerous critics you will find that the main responsible for the "health" report (WHO's Dr Repacholi), said "The scientists did not want to include numbers for predicted deaths, but public relations officials had wanted them in the summary". Isn't it clear enough?
The "4000 deaths" commnuiqué is not science but plain disinformation.
An official ONU report from 1995 [un.org] (the real United Nations "General Assembly", not another IAEA document posing at it) states:
-=-=-=- SNIP -=-=-=-=-
[ LIQUIDATORS, who cleaned the disaster zone ]
20. These men, drawn mainly from the then Soviet army [ ... ] In the time
since, these people have dispersed across the former Soviet Union. Much of
the registering and tracing of their whereabouts is highly inaccurate, in
part because of the break-up of the Soviet Union and subsequent socio-
economic changes. There is even uncertainty as to ho