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To me, the crimes of the Soviets are a spectrum that starts with Lenin and the October Revolution and run clear through the early 90’s. Stalin is but one chapter, a particularly savage chapter, in the Soviet system.

People in the US in the 80’s were silly (or stupid) enough to think that Ol’ Splotch-Top was a new kind of leader, kinder, gentler, cuddlier sort of communist. Well, ask the people of Afghanistan about that. It wasn’t because the Soviets were doing an imitation of a Fuller Brush salesman that we backed the Muj in Afghanistan and started the mess that has sort of boomeranged on us in Osama bin Laden.

As for the robots: No effort seems to have been made to determine what the level of radiation was on the roof project. None. The level of ionizing radiation required to make electronics (ie, solid state electronics) malfunction is huge. No one seemed to want to honestly put 2+2 together and say “Golly, that’s sorta like 4, huh?” or “Golly, it takes one hell of a lot of ionizing radiation to make solid state electronics malfunction... so let’s get some equipment up here and *measure it*.”

As I said, no effort was made. Any engineer worth his beer would have said “Hmmm. Golly, why has more than one robot or remote operated device failed here? Can someone get me a reading on the actual, you know, *level* of ionizing radiation here?” No, instead, let’s go call up the reservists, have them make lead-sheet suits to feel better about it, and send them marching out there.

In hindsight, some people reckon the radiation levels on the roof project was in excess of 2 C/kg. Well, golly... in light of charge levels like that, little wonder the electronics malfunctioned. The solution to that is to not use electronics. Duuuuuh. I’m a EE, and if you give me that sort of operating environment (which would require measuring the radiation levels first), I’d say “Don’t call me, go talk to that MechE over there, and ask around to start getting a whole lot of hydraulic hoses, valves and pumps” - stuff that wouldn’t be affected by that level of ionizing radiation. All that was needed was to take some readings before throwing up one’s hands in disgust and puzzlement as to why the electronics were malfunctioning. If they’d taken said readings, they’d have known that sending men out there was even more absurd.

The Soviets called up 10,000 miners (not members of the Army, but miners - who were given no choices in the matter) to dig a tunnel under the mess, to allow them to install a cooling plant. After the miners worked like sled dogs... the Soviets didn’t install the cooling plant. Instead, they put some concrete into the chamber below the reactor core. Examples like this abound in the Chernobyl story. Utterly feckless, bureaucratic, totalitarian incompetence was the order of the day.

The entombment over Chernobyl wasn’t fully closed for years. They had holes of 1 to 10 square meters in the structure; it was never built to be air or water tight. It was a fast-n-dirty operation, more evidence of a management and political team that had no clue what they were doing. They dumped in sand, boron, lead (what a winning idea there...) on top of the fire.

It still isn’t “sealed,” and the structure actually needs to be replaced. No one appears interested in paying for it, least of all the Ukraine or Russia. Fortunately, just as in TMI and other reactor core meltdowns, the much-ballyhoo’ed meltdown to China (or where ever is on the other side of the globe) never happened. In all instances, the core melted, slumped only so far (in Chernobyl’s case, into the floor below) and it cooled and sat there. Radioactive as all hell, sure, but a China Syndrome? Nope.

Compared to Chernobyl, so far the Japanese have been an order of magnitude less inept. Citing “reactors with 40 times more fuel” is like comparing apples and oranges. A two-stage weapon has far less fuel in it than a power reactor. I’d rather have a faulty power reactor next door than a faulty weapon in storage next door for obvious reasons.

Have the Japanese got a mess on their hands? Of course they do. I’ve said before and I’ll say again, that I think the cleanup costs on this could run as high as $300B. But these constant cynical calls of “they lie!” are getting just a little silly. They’ve got a complicated, highly dynamic situation on their hands, and the clowns in the media have the math and physics IQ of a fluffy rabbit. Add to this the tendency for the lesser technical talents to rise in management, and there’s plenty of potential for mis-statement and false data in the press.

When I look back on the footage of actual work on Chernobyl and then I look at TEPCO’s recent status reports:

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/betu11_e/images/110617e4.pdf

There’s simply no comparison. Anyone who thinks there is is simply full of crap. NISA is warning TEPCO when they have two (count them, *two*) workers with detected exposures above 250 mSv. Tens of thousands of Chernobyl guys have *no* idea how much exposure they got. The Soviets never thought to do measurements. The workers didn’t have proper respirators until late in the game, they didn’t have proper dosimeters, monitoring equipment, etc. The Soviets just blundered their way through the whole thing with brute force.

The IAEA report (now available as of 07 June) makes for interesting reading. I suggest you go read it.

Some of what you say is true (e.g. 10,000 miners) and some of what you say is not (they made no attempt to measure the radiation on the roof) and some of what you say is irrelevant (they deduced that they wouldn’t be able to use machines on the roof due to radiation - they didn’t scratch their heads and wonder. The point was they realized they couldn’t use machines.)
I think the Soviet response was brutal and it still left 1.6 million people living in contaminated zones in ‘86. Highly radioactive mushrooms were just halted at the UK border last week - still heavy contamination showing up 26 years after Chernobyl.
But TEPCO asked to abandon Fukushima. The only ones able to do anything to spare their country and the rest of the world from 3 core melt downs and 4 spent fuel pool melts asked to abandon ship. The brutal Soviet response was a wild bid to save the ship - and partially worked to spare the people so much more damage. TEPCO and the face saving Government response is to cover their backsides and downplay the dangers and is presently on course to do so much more damage. Hope they rethink their strategy.
Oh and they do lie, and their own people are tired of it, and for the first time in their culture, a protest movement is brewing. TEPCO, the Japanese Government, the IAEA have one common goal - to promote nuclear power at all costs. You have the same goal. Why would anyone who knew how the IAEA performed re Chernobyl bother to read their ‘report’ on Fukushima? When the Japanese heard that the IAEA was sending a delegation, a blogger acquired the names of the delegates from various countries and asked readers to contribute anything known about them to see if this was real help being offered or if it was a PR effort. You can imagine their disappointment to learn from collected excerpts from IAEA and related websites that the delegates were PR.
Say, why is it that no insurance company would ever consider insuring a nuclear plant? Don’t bother replying - I know the answer.