[RayChuang88]

Chernobyl was a BAD reactor design to start with. The combination of no containment structure and an inherently dangerous reactor design (see: Windscale reactor accident in the UK in 1957) made the whole situation worse than necessary. Note that at Three Mile Island in 1979, there was actually very little radioactive release because the containment structure worked as designed.

[Empire_of_Liberty]

Weren’t both Chernobyl and Three Mile Island cases of reactor control exercises gone wrong?

Hard to design for that. The more safety you design in, the more extreme the “testing” becomes. Or so it seems to me.

[aquila48]

Chernobyl was designed like a bomb. It had a positive feedback “feature”, meaning that in an loss of control as the reactor core got hotter and more water turned into steam the number of nuclear reactions actually increased, leading to an actual nuclear explosion, which is what happened.

American and all other countries reactors were designed to shut down the nuclear reaction (negative feedback) in case of loss of control. That is why 3 mile Island was so mild compared to Chernobyl.

https://amp-livescience-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/amp.livescience.com/65618-are-chernobyl-style-reactors-still-operating-safe.html?amp_js_v=a2&amp_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQCCAE%3D#referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.livescience.com%2F65618-are-chernobyl-style-reactors-still-operating-safe.html