[manigandham]

If it was a diesel-electric then the broken water-pipe would've shorted out the batteries and electrics, and the flooded engine room would've stopped the engines, resulting in the exact same loss of power.

The fact is that the reactor didn't fail, it worked normally. The steam system didn't "fuck up" but was used incorrectly. The part that did fail was the ballast tank safety system. Diesel-electrics aren't a magical answer and have major disadvantages (like the need for air intake in a submarine).

It seems you're arguing that nuclear-powered designs aren't good, which is an entirely different topic than the safety record of the reactors themselves. Bad design of a system is not an argument that that core principles are inherently wrong, which is exactly the same thing any nuclear expert will tell you about Chernobyl.

[Retric]

It’s very possible that a broken pipe would have shorted out all batteries on an equivalent non nuclear sub. But, that would also have been a significant design flaw.

Anyway, I think this is more a case of disagreements about what constitutes a system than about what happened. I would say if the design of a critical system lets people mess up then that’s a failure of the design and the system. Chernobyl was very much a case of operators doing a long series of dumb things as people do. Similarly, the operators caused an issue with the steam system, but that just means the system and it’s design was also faulty. (IMO, the steam system should be considered part of the nuclear power plant as civilian nuclear power plants also use a steam loop for similar reasons.)

I would rate the US Navy highly on nuclear safety operations especially over the last 50 years.