SultanOfSwing

In fact, I belive the Americum in smoke detectors is more harmful than U-238 or Pu-239 but I may be wrong.

Chernobyl was also caused by the plant engineers carrying out a test in less than optimal operating conditions, and directly ignoring advice to postpone the test because it had been left to the night staff who were not prepared. Then, the classic "Oh the scale only goes up to 3.6 roentgens/hr, so that's what the radiation level is on the reactor roof" didn't help much either.

It's interesting that if Chernobyl had a US style containment building, nobody need have died from radiation exposure, either ARS or cancer. It is such a shame that the USSR produced such great scientists but their bureaucracy resulted in such lax engineering procedures.