It isn't that the plant failed and the vivid depictions of that which have most affected me. It's the depictions of the knock on effects which were barely stemmed after the failure that have caused me to reconsider.

The most concerning thing about Chernobyl is not the initial explosion. It's the impact the secondary and tertiary disasters could have had if the Soviet government had not acted to mitigate them. Those are cases in which millions of people are affected and regions the size of Alabama become uninhabitable. I personally was not aware that a failure at a plant could cascade into those kind of issues. I didn't realize that Chernobyl could have been much much worse.

And that is my problem. I believe fundamentally in human fallibility. We and our best machines will always find new ways to fail. Always.

In some cases, the risks are acceptable. Such is the case with flying in a plane. No matter how good aircraft and our safety procedures get. The loss of a plane, however tragic does not impact the future of our planet of our species.

What's more, the law of large numbers says if you make nuclear power ubiquitous, it's almost a guarantee that some 1/1000, 1/10000, or even 1/1000000, event will occur.

For me, I'm not against nuclear now but I am much less gung-ho and that's due to this show. I look forward to learning more though and perhaps my opinion will sway back.