[08-15]

And all that greed, corruption, corner-cutting resulted in two major accidents, which killed fewer than 60 people in total. What a condemning track record!

One of these accidents happened in the Soviet Union, in a reactor type that could never be licensed in the US. The principal cause was operators ignoring safety regulations under political pressure. Do you really think, whether the US builds or doesn't build PWRs and BWRs would have impressed the SU one way or another?

The other accident happened in Japan. The principal cause was a rather extreme tsunami. What turned it from a minor mishap into a major accident was that modern politics invalidated the original safety concept. (The BWR's containment has to be vented before core damage occurs, but that was no longer politically acceptable in 2011.)

The lesson to learn from both accidents is that politicians have too much power and engineers have too little.