The Chernobyl reactor also had no containment vessel, so the initial core failure blew a cloud of radioactive fire into the air. The Fukushima containment vessel kept most of the crap in one place until it could melt into a cohesive mass.
You wouldn't get the graphite fly ash that turned Chernobyl from a localized problem into an international headache, so no, it wouldn't have been as bad as Chernobyl. But it could have been much worse than it was.
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But it could have been much worse, say like Chernobyl, and it wasn't due to good engineering.
How could it have been like Chernobyl? The Fukushima reactors didn't have graphite moderators.
Totally different reactor technologies, equivocating them is spurious at best.
Using a totally different reactor technology strikes me as an example of good engineering.
The Chernobyl reactor also had no containment vessel, so the initial core failure blew a cloud of radioactive fire into the air. The Fukushima containment vessel kept most of the crap in one place until it could melt into a cohesive mass.
You wouldn't get the graphite fly ash that turned Chernobyl from a localized problem into an international headache, so no, it wouldn't have been as bad as Chernobyl. But it could have been much worse than it was.