4 ms·

Again, this is just how I remember things, but I think many people weren't convinced that something like chernobyl could still happen with "modern technology" (

Again, this is just how I remember things, but I think many people weren't convinced that something like chernobyl could still happen with "modern technology" (whatever people imagined that to be) and it was mostly fukushima that proved to them that the danger hadn't gone away over the years thanks to some abstract notion of "technological progress". That's what I mean by "single event". Of course, the informed person would not have made a decission based on just that one incident, but it's what I suspect large parts of society did.

lispm 7y ago
Three Miles Island was widely discussed. I don't think people thought that this could not happen here. Just the opposite, since a lot of the early nuclear technology and plant designs in Germany came from the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident I think lots of people were aware that complex technology has lots of risks which were there, but largely ignored. The industry claimed that they can handle the risks it was willing to handle and/or which were thought to be actual risks. There are a lot of risks associated with large/complex technical systems, caused by natural disasters, malfunctioning technical systems, aging technical systems, users making unintentional errors, users making intentional errors and bad actors. Some of these risks were just ignored. For example for many years nuclear power plants were built with no or very weak protection against plane crashes. For example, how realistic is the risk that a large passenger aircraft can/will be flown into a nuclear power plant? Military planes will then shoot it down before reaching a plant? Before 9/11 many in the industry would have thought that this risk is nothing they need to deal with and only small plane crashes were thought to be important to deal with. Then also a Lufthansa pilot was flying a plane into the ground and crashed it in France, killing all people on board. Once those events happened, the regulators take it much more seriously - even though parts of the public was already thinking that these events are possible.

lispm 7y ago

Three Miles Island was widely discussed. I don't think people thought that this could not happen here. Just the opposite, since a lot of the early nuclear technology and plant designs in Germany came from the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident I think lots of people were aware that complex technology has lots of risks which were there, but largely ignored. The industry claimed that they can handle the risks it was willing to handle and/or which were thought to be actual risks. There are a lot of risks associated with large/complex technical systems, caused by natural disasters, malfunctioning technical systems, aging technical systems, users making unintentional errors, users making intentional errors and bad actors. Some of these risks were just ignored. For example for many years nuclear power plants were built with no or very weak protection against plane crashes. For example, how realistic is the risk that a large passenger aircraft can/will be flown into a nuclear power plant? Military planes will then shoot it down before reaching a plant? Before 9/11 many in the industry would have thought that this risk is nothing they need to deal with and only small plane crashes were thought to be important to deal with. Then also a Lufthansa pilot was flying a plane into the ground and crashed it in France, killing all people on board. Once those events happened, the regulators take it much more seriously - even though parts of the public was already thinking that these events are possible.