I agree but one could say the exact same thing about the Soviet Union running tests at 2 in the morning at Chernobyl. So if you're willing to discount one it's only fair to discount the other no?
The Banqiao dam suffered from major flaws then from decades of a fair amount of diverse very adverse conditions and absence of proper maintenance... and it kept up. Then it took a typhoon to finally destroy it. The grotesquely bad handling continued during the crisis which followed.
A few hours of improper use were sufficient to trigger a disaster at the Chernobyl's reactor, then the authorities' reaction (evacuation, liquidators...), albeit imperfect, was way better than at Banqiao.
Chernobyl was of a flawed design with a very serious bug which was known (but classified), and it took a terrible very poorly coordinated drill to cause it to actually meltdown.
A more accurate comparison would be Fukushima, where the design was wrong (backup generators in the basement, in a flood prone zone) that survived a 9 on the Richter scale earthquake and was only damaged by the resulting tsunami (but only because the operator had ignored all the warnings about the placement and protection of backup power).
The design flaw (every equipment has some...) did not condemn it: this Chernobyl's reactor was a RBMK, many RBMKs ran for decades after the disaster, and some do run right now:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK#List_of_RBMK_reactors
A non-maintained flawed huge dam copes with decades of major problems then a typhoon breaks it, while a nuclear plant missing a few bricks exposed to a huge tide breaks havoc in a few hours.
The flaws in the RBMKs which were known before Chernobyl were fixed afterwards (with changes that had been proposed before Chernobyl) in the other reactors that were kept running, though. Not claiming that the RBMKs were flawless after the fact, but the specific flaw that led to the disaster was fixed.
> The flaws in the RBMKs which were known before Chernobyl were fixed afterwards
Indeed, and it shows that the design wasn't flawed to the point of condemning it: a fix was possible. Implication: even a non-major flaw can trigger a disaster.
> (with changes that had been proposed before Chernobyl)
Indeed, and it shows that even detected problems sometimes aren't fixed. This is not reserved to the USSR: Fukushima also showed it (it was well-known that the seawall/levee wasn't high enough, as recalled in my previous post here the nearby Onagawa plant had an adequate levee).
There were 2203 deaths in the evacuation. Nobody died of radiation. If you had an oil plant with an inadequate levee you’d have had to evacuate too. This is at best tangential.
Officially: 2202 deaths (attributed to the nuclear disaster) from evacuation, and 1 death from radiation.
Technically: determining the health impact of radiation is difficult and the methods are disputed. Moreover every specialist agrees that waiting at least 15 years is necessary because most induced ailments have a non-neglectable latency. Solid cancers, for example, develop in up to 15 years.
I mean, Bangqiao wiped out numerous settlements. On the other hand you know the remaining RBMK reactors at Chernobyl continued to operate for years after the incident, the last one closing in 2000, and only after the international community conditioned funding for the New Safe Containment installation on it. There's still a few RBMK reactors operating - after the safety retrofits of course.
> remaining RBMK reactors at Chernobyl continued to operate for years
Many reactors did continue to operate, in many sites. It shows that the design wasn't flawed to the point of condemning it: a fix was possible. Implication: even a non-major flaw can trigger a disaster.