I think human error is one of the kinds of error it's really hard to work around. You are always going to have people who make mistakes or even intentionally cut corners or do unsafe things, depending on the circumstances.
Would I expect a German plant to be run in a safer manner in the 2020s than a Soviet Ukrainian plant in the 1980s? Sure, absolutely. Both because of the design of the plants, and because of the different safety cultures. But I don't think we can just hand-wave a disaster away and claim that it only happened because of X or Y or Z, without being certain X, Y, and Z have been eliminated. And I don't think we can say that with certainty.
Chernobyl was no error per se. It was conscious decision with political background, possible, because entire system of values in USSR was upside down. In normal country there would be no reason to do any of that.
This type of issues? No. I assume you mean nazis, but while it's hard to find words to describe their crimes, they had pretty robust approach to engineering. On the east side from the other hand ideology always beat logic.
Also, if we're going to assume, that everything we build will be foundation for the next Hitler, then there's hardly point in doing anything.
Of course it was present, like in any authoritarian system.
But you can see that the scale of fuckups for these two is nowhere near of each other. Modern evidence is Ukrainian war, which Russians believed, can win in 48 hours.
I'm not sure what side of the argument you are on.
My point is that authoritarian regimes are possible anywhere; they lead to information being surpressed; and this could be dangerous in the case of nuclear reactors.
The example of Russia seems an excellent example of the same pattern.
Not sure if I have to pick a side. Usually there's some truth at both ends. :-)
My point is, that chance of USSR-like regime in western Europe are pretty low, and being afraid to do anything, because it might be used by this hypothetical regime will probably cause more harm than good.
For eg. right now we're feeding Russia with money, which is guaranteed to be bad for us in the long run. I assume we are doing that, because it will be easier to find single scapegoat for nuclear plant failure, than for years of bad foreign politics.
> that chance of USSR-like regime in western Europe are pretty low
Why? Surely if Brexit or Berlusconi or Le Pen or Orban or Erdogan shows us anything it shows how democratic outcomes are unpredictable, especially over the 50 year plus timeframe of a Nuclear Plant.
Would I expect a German plant to be run in a safer manner in the 2020s than a Soviet Ukrainian plant in the 1980s? Sure, absolutely. Both because of the design of the plants, and because of the different safety cultures. But I don't think we can just hand-wave a disaster away and claim that it only happened because of X or Y or Z, without being certain X, Y, and Z have been eliminated. And I don't think we can say that with certainty.