[natmaka]

Banquiao isn't a sound case here.

It "took place during the Chinese Cultural Revolution when most people were busy with the "revolution" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure

The "Cultural Revolution" began in 1966.

In such a context an otherwise avoidable catastrophe may happen.

This Revolution followed the "Great Leap Forward" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward ), with famines. "In the subsequent famines of the early 1960s popularly attributed to the Great Leap Forward, Henan was one of the hardest hit and millions of lives were lost." Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henan#Modern_Era .

Moreover all this came after a civil war and violent Japanese invasion, during which dams were bombed, causing "massive flooding in Henan" (same source).

Predicting and adverting this catastrophe was possible, but given such a context nobody was able to do so.

Moreover the exact amount of victims of the Chernobyl disaster remains an open question, see for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl:_Consequences_of_the...

[belorn]

I am unsure how well USSR in 1986 were as an operator of nuclear reactors in what can be describe as occupied Ukraine. It is distinctly possible that in that context the accident could have been avoided, or that it was always doomed for failure.

Through looking at the list of dam failures (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hydroelectric_power_st...), I am less certain that the technology has been demonstrated to be safer than nuclear.

[natmaka]

The Chernobyl disaster root cause is difficult to assess ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Safety_test ), however given the sheer amount of active nuclear reactors in USSR at the time one may consider that this country wasn't completely inadequate. The USSR wasn't in great shape at the time but Chernobyl added to the mess (Gorbachev famously declared "The nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl 20 years ago this month, even more than my launch of perestroika, was perhaps the real cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union" ): the pre-Chernobyl era wasn't as chaotic, this disaster suddenly broke many things.

As for the safety hydro and wind are clear winers (solar coming next, nuclear following): https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy Don't neglect that those stats take into account UN figures for nuclear victims, which are WAY lower than many other estimates ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl:_Consequences_of_the... )