The World before and after Bhopal and Chernobyl

A muscular optimism was stirring in the year 1984.   The global economy was surging, and at the height of the cold war, Western governments held their ground during the ferocious debate in Western Europe over the deployment of the SS-20 missles.  Within 5 years, the bricks fell at the Berlin Wall.   In Southern California, a successful Summer Olympics was held, without the Soviet Union, and spirits were buoyed in time for Ronald Reagan to be easily re-elected.  Investors wallets were opening also, Los Angeles venture capitalists Chuck Cole and Richard Riordan funded Triconex.   

In December 1984, a catastrophic gas leak at a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India led to nearly 2,000 immediate casualties and lasting health and environmental issues that continue a generation later.   Most of the lawsuits have been settled, but as the say, nothing is inevitable except death, taxes, and loopholes.  Public revulsion caused governments to act with new regulations and petro-chemical companies to invest in updated safety systems for their plants and factories.   Some safety analysts still believe that sabotage was involved in the Bhopal incident, but the magnitude of the disaster ameliorated any serious investigations into the cause and focus on the victims and community to recover.

In August, 1986, untrained personnel conducting an experiment during a scheduled maintenance period caused an explosion at a nuclear facility at Chernobyl, in the Ukraine.  This time, the damage spread throughout Western Europe and once again focused world attention on plant safety.  In American, construction of new nuclear plants had already ground to a halt due to the Three Mile Island incident in 1979.  The Chernobyl nuclear disaster was real, caused serious long term damage, and provided foes of nuclear energy with a powerful new agenda.

Industry, which had increasingly put dangerous petro-chemical facilities in low-cost countries, now faced unwanted scrutiny by association with the disasters.

It was time to upgrade safety systems.