[nickik]

Or rather the MASSIVE overreaction compared to the actual events. Chernobyl was a Soviet reactor that was designed to make nuclear weapons. Three Mile Island killed less people then 1000s of mining accidents, pipeline explosions and lots of other things.

The perception of Three Mile Island was hilariously out of scale with the actual danger.

The regulatory overreaction was so big that since then basically the whole nuclear industry died and has been on life support for 30 years.

[saagarjha]

> Chernobyl was a Soviet reactor that was designed to make nuclear weapons.

Source?

[loeg]

Soviet:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster

> the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, near the now-abandoned town of Pripyat, in northern Soviet Ukraine.

Weapons:

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-10-03-mn-4176-s...

> In interviews, U.S. and West European officials said that some of the graphite reactors like the four at Chernobyl may be used to produce weapons-grade plutonium, but that their most likely military purpose is to make tritium, a rare isotope of hydrogen used in thermonuclear weapons.