I think there is a context to Chernobyl or Fukushima - they were industrial accidents, and there is a very long history of industrial accidents, many of which w

I think there is a context to Chernobyl or Fukushima - they were industrial accidents, and there is a very long history of industrial accidents, many of which were far more deadly. Obviously, in both the USSR and Japan, there were/are problems with regulatory capture, and in the USSR, safety culture. I think people overfocus on the dramatic explosion and underfocus on the legion of maimed, poisoned, and permanently disabled people that suffer from industrial accidents every day. It's both unjust and ineffective - you can't make a dangerous industrial process safe in a society where civil servants see their job as to promote the interests of big industrial concerns, and that's at the root of both Fukishima and Minamata disease.