The Chernobyl disaster Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

The Chernobyl disaster - Essay Example There were economic, technological and political factors alongside the almost complete lack of effective health and safety measures were highly evident causes of the Chernobyl nuclear accident. Indeed despite its then status as a military superpower in the mid 1980s the Soviet Union had serious problems that the Chernobyl nuclear disaster amply demonstrated. By the mid 1980s the Stalinist era economic planning and one party political systems of the Soviet Union were beginning to show their age and their propensity for economic failure, administrative inefficiency, and declining political legitimacy. More ominously the Soviet Union’s outdated industries were a danger both to its own people, other countries, as well as the environment. The strain of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and a renewed a nuclear arms race with the United States were not taken by the stagnant economy (White, 1990). The main economic and political institutions as well as it systems dated back to the infrastructure constructed by Stalin in the late1920s and the 1930s. The collectivisation of agriculture and industrialisation had been achieved at great human cost, with political obedience and loyalty to the Communists counting for more than efficiency or ability to do their jobs (James, 2003 p. 53). When such an approach was typical of the managers and the workers of nuclear power stations it was always a potential cause of accidents. The Soviet Union had suffered horrendous losses during the Second World War which were partially compensated by the gaining of satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the desire to prevent itself being invaded ever again (James, 2003 p. 301). Yet the onset of the Cold War meant that the Soviet Union took undue risk in both its civil and its military nuclear programmes in order to generate electricity and make atomic weapons as quickly as possible. Undue risks that