Re:Nuclear reactions are smoldering again at Chernobyl
by hedora on Thursday May 06, 2021 @10:55AM
(#27064157)
By all accounts, the person running Chernobyl was a complete idiot. They disabled multiple safeties (including ones that would have averted the meltdown), then tried to make it output more than it was rated for (directly leading to the meltdown).
The same could be said for Boeing, etc., but that doesn’t mean we need to abandon air travel. We just need better leadership in safety critical organizations.
Re:Nuclear reactions are smoldering again at Chernobyl
by Chris2048 on Thursday May 06, 2021 @11:19AM
(#27064544)
> this idea that they were dumb and we're smart
The cold war suggests Russia is anything but dumb. And as those bullets demonstrate, they where smart enough to know better - but the problem with the Soviet Union was not that it collapsed (or was unstable), but that it wasn't transparent - it cared more about the image of functionality than actual functionality.
Re:Nuclear reactions are smoldering again at Chernobyl
by orwin on Thursday May 06, 2021 @12:28PM
(#27065668)
Ahah, exact!
To have credit, you have to look good. To look good, you have to hide the bad under the mantle and show how much you can do with so little! In a way, soviet russia was more productivist than any company ever was and will ever be.
Should only collapse-proof nations build nuclear plants? If it looks like a collapse is coming, should they decommission them early?
I get the better tech arguments-- those are solid. But this idea that they were dumb and we're smart is, I guarantee you, the same exact idea they had at Chernobyl. The whole reason they wanted to save face so much is because the whole thing was built on that idea.