Chernobyl is a lesson not because what it was, but what it could have been. Only miracle (Legasov ans Sherbina being honest and persistent people) saved the damn thing from polluting whole Europe. Train wreck is a train wreck, it is limited in terms of destruction it can produce.
Not really. In hindsight, many of the efforts like digging under the reactor and dropping lead from air were of questionable usefulness at best. In their defense, they acted according to the information and resources they had, but all in all the mitigation efforts gave unnecessary radiation exposure to many people and many of them were completely useless. If the reactor were left alone for a while, it wouldn't have changed much.
Yes exactly. The next accident might be different. You will never know if it will have contaminated the ground water or not, what are the necessary steps to prevent spread of the radiation. So yeah, it is not what it was, but what it might have been.
