chuck, You have to refresh my geography, what parts of France or Finland are these places?
Chernobyl seems to be a matter of plain incompetance and the poorly maintained state of almost anything in Russia that would have resulted in deaths in any industrial complex, refinery or any such processing plant, rather than something so specific to the nuclear power generation industry.
Could you fill me in on how many casualities the other "significant discharges", you mentioned caused?
It might be interesting for you to have a look at how many deaths there are in the coal mining industry each year, for comparison.
