[wkat4242]

Wow I had no idea of that one. I actually lived pretty close to there.

Seems like the incidents happened in part because the operators couldn't see in the dark after a power outage, and the emergency torch had been taken by someone to fix their car... :X You can't make this stuff up.

[jacquesm]

Yes, that's how it happened (I heard it from a person that was closer to the source). And because you can't make this stuff up I don't think it is possible to responsibly operate a nuclear reactor because the normalization of deviation is impossible to guard against over the career span of a typical human. Everywhere people work they make mistakes and do stupid stuff and over time this accumulates to the point where the 'experts' are themselves the danger but because they've done it for so long nobody can do a better job than they can in the short term. And then there is aging gear, embrittlement and a thousand other things that can (and do) go wrong.

You can't fix human nature and that's the root cause of many of these problems. And because of that I'm very much against nuclear power, no matter what the short term advantages may seem to be. Sooner or later every plant needs to be de-commissioned, will have an incident or will end up as a target or a casualty of something or other. Multiply that by the number of power plants that you'd need to make the world reliant on nuclear power and the number of accidents would quickly rise above what is acceptable (if we're not already there).

Nuclear proponents are quick to argue that this was all with old technology and newer designs are safer but people are still the same and even new technology resulting in working installations will eventually see those same installations age.