Chernobyl is probably the most damaging thing to come out of the Soviet Union long-term. The design of Chernobyl was crazy. I dug fairly deep into the many, man

Chernobyl is probably the most damaging thing to come out of the Soviet Union long-term. The design of Chernobyl was crazy. I dug fairly deep into the many, many issues the reactor had when that HBO mini series aired, if anything it only made me massively more confident in our modern designs. Chernobyl's design was deeply flawed and they knew it yet did nothing, not even tell the people operating the reactor. Then it took these operators doing everything wrong, including consciously putting the reactor in an unstable state (removing nearly all control rods way beyond regulation) and keep pushing the reactor for absolutely no rational reason to create the explosion. And even then, had the reactor had a proper concrete enclosure like western reactors do, the fallout of the explosion would probably have been severely dimnished and mostly contained on-premise. It still would've been the worst catastrophe in the history of nuclear power generation but only a fraction of what we've had to deal with. It would've been Fukushima-like, probably (i.e. pretty damn bad, but not apocalyptic).