The Chernobyl Disaster — Painful Lessons Learned and a Safer Path Forward for Nuclear Energy

by Dr. Gary L. Deel and J. J. Marra

Last year, I interview nuclear physics expert J. J. Marra about the breakthrough discovery of a means for controlled nuclear fusion — a news headline that rocked the science world and is likely to revolutionize the nuclear energy industry in the decades ahead.

Following that article, I watched the Max series Chernobyl — which, for any interested readers, is an exquisitely well-produced dramatization of the heartbreaking human story surrounding the 1986 powerplant disaster, its causes, and its fallout.

Thereafter, I reconnected with J. J. on this topic, and I thought it might be interesting for us to look at the Chernobyl disaster together, in order to talk about a number of related topics, including: what the average person might misunderstand about nuclear power plants, what went wrong at Chernobyl, what the costs were (then and now), what we learned from the tragic incident that occurred there, how Chernobyl shaped public opinion around the safety of nuclear energy, and how the new discovery regarding nuclear fusion might further improve safety in the nuclear energy industry. Below is our interview on these subjects and more.