[belorn]

You have it wrong if you think people could return back to their homes in a few weeks after a catastrophic dam failure. Flooding like those don't leave any homes or cities to return to. Land slides and wave takes everything in its path, buildings people and animals alike.

In 1975 when Banqiao Dam failed, 26,000 died from flooding, 145,000 died from subsequent famine and epidemics, and 11 million became homeless. When the waters flowed back to the sea, it took a bit longer than "been back inweeks if not days". The flooding did not leave any radiation, but the human toll was still very high.

[sfifs]

I was referring to the Oroville dam in the GP comment. The 180k people displaced started returning literally 2 days later with zero casualties.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oroville_Dam_crisis

Yes two generations ago (that's how old the China disaster you're referring to is) especially in developing economies, there were major dam disasters. You don't really quite see them today - especially in developed largely economies which are also likely to have Nuclear as an option

[belorn]

It is only with hindsight that we can say that loosing control of the Oroville dam did not have a catastrophic result. They lost control and issued a evacuation exactly because they did not know what would happen at that point. In hindsight it only caused minor flooding and debris that was addressed downstream, and then the weather improved.

I have not heard of a nuclear accident where they lost control of the reaction, issued an evacuation order, and then later managed to regain control with only minor damage. If it happened we should still not describe such accident as acceptable since people could literally return a few days later. Loosing control of a destructive force is unacceptable regardless of outcomes, and anything else would just result in deviation of acceptable risk.

[nitrogen]

Not just developing economies had dam disasters: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teton_Dam