[CamperBob2]

Either way, far more people die prematurely every day from causes due to pollution from coal-fired plants. But if you're a journalist or documentary filmmaker trying to make something look all cool and edgy and scary and shit, an exploding nuclear power plant makes for a much more interesting story than just another day in the pulmonary ward.

[ncmncm]

If not for some very edgy heroics, it would have been millions, and most of Ukraine down to the Black Sea uninhabitable for centuries. What did happen was not just "because nuke", but because of a whole series of design and management failures, very far from the least of which was denialism.

They did finally fix the cause of the explosion in the other reactors of that design, remarkably many years later.

Nobody here will defend coal, but graphite-moderated reactors are not the tech you want to be defending.

[CamperBob2]

If not for some very edgy heroics, it would have been millions

That seems a tad unlikely.

Nobody here will defend coal, but graphite-moderated reactors are not the tech you want to be defending.

Exactly. And the reason we're stuck with 60-year-old reactor technology is...

[ncmncm]

There is a reason I mentioned "denial". The Central Committee shared your skepticism while they could. Ignorance is a luxury.

[CamperBob2]

Sorry, I don't have the faintest clue what argument you're making.

[ncmncm]

Uninformed skepticism worth no more than the effort that was put into it.