May 30 2019 16 mins 9
It's been more than three decades since, in the deep dark night April 26, 1986, the number 4 reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant failed. The nuclear disaster released heavily radioactive gas into the atmosphere for days. The number of people it killed is unclear to this day, because the event from that day, and to some extent even today, remains shrouded in mystery. At the time of the disaster, it took the Soviet authorities weeks to inform citizens of what had happened. Chernobyl was long considered the worst nuclear failure, unmatched for devastation and contamination. Until the 2011 Fukushima meltdowns. On this episode of the Stratfor Talks podcast, we discuss the accident, how it changed the world's view of nuclear, the safety constraints that make it one of the most costly ways to produce energy, and how nuclear fits into a transition to low-or-no emission energy. Hosted by Ben Sheen, with Eugene Chausovsky and Rebecca Keller.
