It was exempt from certain regulations that applied to newer plants due to "grandfathering". This was at least in part due to the fact that their Nuclear Safety Commission was comprised of the plant operators and not an arms-length independent regulatory body comprised of SME's like is the case elsewhere.
I mean, it's the "this coffee is hot" level of stupid, right? The risk should have been obvious, and the same applies to recreational space travel. These are not mature industries with a body of test data and established processes like conventional air travel for example, which has an extremely low rate of incidence, given the number of flights per day. These are niche industries with bespoke products, failure is inevitable.
As I said, regulation isn't inherently good or bad. The purpose is to usually prevent known failures by leveraging known solutions, enforced by an agency that's supposed to be an expert on the subject. Far too often however, these bodies are hijacked by special interest groups or folks with an agenda who then produce regulatory framework that doesn't serve the purpose of increasing safety and instead just acts as a barrier into the space and slowing progress, often at great cost. Or, in the case of firearms regulation in Canada, preys on public ignorance and fear to advance non-solutions so that an agency can claim they are "doing something" while railroading people that are guaranteed to be compliant. Leaving the hard task of going after the criminals to someone else to deal with. This is made brutally obvious when the people running these orgs don't even know the existing laws and regulations.
