Word: chernobyl
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...quiz: what do the names Laroux, Ethan, Marker, Melissa, Chernobyl, Class, Footer, Form, Happy99 and Explore.zip have in common? O.K., pencils down. Score one point if you said they're all horrible little computer viruses. Score two if you guessed they were the Top 10 digital infections of 1999. And award a dozen bonus points if you worked out the most important and terrifying connection: like the Love Bug, every last one e-mailed its way into our PCs using Microsoft software as a carrier...
...Immediate fatalities caused by the 1986 explosion inside Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear power plant...
...seems ironic that nuclear energy is widely regarded as a greater environmental threat than dams, even though fission--with the jarring exceptions of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island--has caused relatively little harm. There may be huge calamities in its future, and its fiercely toxic fission products still have no demonstrably safe burial place. But dams, for all their material blessings, are responsible for some of the worst environmental tragedies in history...
Well, not everyone, and there's the rub. Americans, happy in their getting and spending, are largely oblivious to their massive world influence. But others are not, particularly foreign elites. Some chafe, like the French Minister of Culture who called Disneyland Paris a cultural Chernobyl. Some rant, like the Malaysian Prime Minister who rose at the U.N. in September to denounce "the true ugliness of Western capitalism...backed by the military might of capitalism's greatest proponent...
...wasn't Chernobyl and it wasn't Three Mile Island, but the accident was bad enough. Though authorities eventually gave the all clear, the full extent of the damage is unknown. But what made it most frightening was the amount of time that passed before anybody seemed to know just how bad it was or wasn't. At one point, radiation levels a mile or so from the plant were 15,000 times higher than normal for an urban setting; 46 workers were exposed to dangerously high levels of radiation. U.S. and European experts said backup safety measures should have...