Nuclear power

[Rev. Rye]

And it's also worth noting that Chernobyl failed because they decided to do an extremely risky test that could only work well under some very specific circumstances and they did everything so wrong that if HBO hadn't done their Chernobyl miniseries and on the off-chance that FOX ever decides to end The Simpsons, they could have done the Chernobyl .

The fact that the reactor was out-of-date and that the plant didn't actually have a proper containment structure (something that most Western nuclear reactors tend to take for granted) didn't help things. And that's to say nothing of the incompetence of the people who worked there, something the miniseries exaggerated only slightly.





The problem, on several levels, seems to be rooted more in the flaws in the Soviet system than anything inherent in nuclear power, from the RBMK design that was specifically created to cut corners (for instance, instead of the standard steel-reinforced concrete containers, all that separated the core from the outside world was a single lid that could be and was blown off by a sufficiently large explosion) to staffing them with people who valued their place in the party far more than, y'know, making sure the damn reactor doesn't explode, and when it does explode, caring more about how bad it would be for them if it were true than trying to contain the fucking radiation before it's too late.