alt Hacker NewsChernobyl and Fukushima were different accidents and causes. Chernobyl was a systemic failure of the soviet system. Fukushima was a wild edge case that an earthquake and tsunami drained the coolant.
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The edge case was predicted, but market and political forces chose to ignore it. The GE Type II reactor had known issues. [0]
I should add that I am not strictly anti-nuclear, and it is super interesting that some of the largest funders of anti-nuclear propaganda have been actors from the fossil fuel industry. [1]
[0] https://publicintegrity.org/environment/reactors-at-heart-of...
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2016/07/13/are-f...
Wild edge cases are to be expected when you do things at scale. If you build 20 buildings in different regions, at least one of them will likely face a once-in-1000-years natural disaster. And it's difficult to estimate how bad that particular kind of once-in-1000-years event can be, because you probably only have a century or two of reliable data.
Let’s not forget that you don’t have to be a socialist/communist nation to decide you want to do the cheaper thing. Without robust regulations I guarantee you a Chernobyl-like disaster could easily happen in the US because of less scrupulous companies cutting corners and choosing the cheaper path. With Chernobyl it was the government instead of a private company.
We can talk all day about how the system incentivized people playing CYA rather than actually trying to solve the problem (true and fair critiques), but when it comes down to it, this happened because the cheaper option was chosen and potential issues were overlooked. That transcends political systems.
Edge cases don't count?
The truth is, all reactors ever built were considered safe at their time with whatever definition of safe. No one builds unsafe reactors. Yet they turned out not to be safe.