One thing I haven’t seen in this thread: so far, countries operating nuclear power plants are mostly the world’s elite in terms of engineering culture. Aside jo

One thing I haven’t seen in this thread: so far, countries operating nuclear power plants are mostly the world’s elite in terms of engineering culture. Aside jokes about French cars or American approach to safety vs profit, these are the countries that lead the world in engineering feats. I’d be very cautious about extrapolating nuclear safety to the rest of the world. And this is not a dig at Africans. In my native Poland, nuclear-free, we have a lot of coal mines, some with very poor safety records. A number of disasters happened when methane sensors were deliberately tampered with, so that extraction could continue despite unsafe conditions. Both management and front miners have been blamed for such events. What would happen when operating a nuclear plant? In both Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters, there have been organisational (political corruption?) issues as well that clouded the judgment in safety. So abstracting from technical culture, would countries with lower standards of governance do as well in keeping their reactors in top shape? Maybe yes, and maybe even if not, that’s still better than coal, but I haven’t seen this considered. Not to mention, we usually assume the only way a reactor could be deliberately damaged is via a terrorist attack. But in a proper war, don’t reactors seem like pretty obvious targets?