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No or Different Chernobyl?

MAC161

Well-known member
Published by SLP
Location
WI, USA
I'm not certain how much AH is out there revolving around major industrial and/or ecological events, but this one came to mind after rereading an overview of Gorbachev's premiership, which described Chernobyl as his first major crisis.

If the accident had not happened, for any one of a number of specific reasons (Ex: a prepared operating shift for the outage simulation, thus avoiding the power drop or the unstable reactor condition this created), what would've been the ramifications for the USSR, Europe and nuclear energy in general? The most obvious would be no radiation blanket over Europe, no loss of Pripyat or a major nuclear plant for the Soviets, and none of the subsequent environmental developments in the contaminated area of OTL. But how would Gorbachev's rule been affected by the absence of a major nuclear accident? What changes might this lead to with the Cold War? How would the anti-nuclear movement fare without its starkest example of the dangers of such tech?

On a somewhat different note, if Chernobyl still occurred, but at a later date (say, from 1991 or farther ahead), would the environmental effects still be the same? What would the impact be then on the USSR (or Russia, if dissolution still occurs in '91), Europe, the Cold War and nuclear tech?
 
The thing with Chernobyl is that even if it didn’t occur, a similar (if maybe less deadly) disaster would have occurred due to the design of the reactor essentially making it a small bomb due to the Graphite tipped control rods.

For example, a similar style situation was only just averted in 1987 in a reactor near Leningrad.

As for it’s event outside of the Soviet, it probably means the German Greens do a bit worse in 87’ since a lot of there campaigning was boosted by Chernobyl. Anti-Nuclear sentiment still exists, since Three Mile Island happened and Nuclear Power was a rather cumbersome source of power to create (there’s a great Adam Curtis documentary on the failures of Nuclear Power).
 
The thing with Chernobyl is that even if it didn’t occur, a similar (if maybe less deadly) disaster would have occurred due to the design of the reactor essentially making it a small bomb due to the Graphite tipped control rods.

For example, a similar style situation was only just averted in 1987 in a reactor near Leningrad.

As for it’s event outside of the Soviet, it probably means the German Greens do a bit worse in 87’ since a lot of there campaigning was boosted by Chernobyl. Anti-Nuclear sentiment still exists, since Three Mile Island happened and Nuclear Power was a rather cumbersome source of power to create (there’s a great Adam Curtis documentary on the failures of Nuclear Power).

Another nuclear accident didn't have to be as bad as Chernobyl was, though. In Chernobyl, a lot of things went wrong.
 
Another nuclear accident didn't have to be as bad as Chernobyl was, though. In Chernobyl, a lot of things went wrong.
True, but a very similar event did happen in Leningrad and even though it managed to avert the Chernobyl style explosion, we’re still talking radiation leaking and all that.
 
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