Yes, Chernobyl was especially bad, and yes there were issues at Fukushima. I think we would avoid Chernobyl-level disasters, but I'm not convinced we would avoid Fukushima-level disasters.
We have very few nuclear plants in areas that are even seismically active anymore, much less have any meaningful tsunami risk.
It seems obvious that it's possible to build safe nuclear power plants - we've done it. But I think it's like building airplanes. Despite flying being the safest way to travel, all the planes were built decades ago and our attempts to change that in the US, ie the 737-MAX, have shown obvious examples of corruption and incompetence that have led to unnecessary deaths.
I think where we disagree is whether or not the US government is competent enough to build a nuclear power plant today, not whether or not the project itself is viable. I realize my original comment doesn't reflect that, so I apologize for the poor communication on my part.
I'm not convinced this is true. Obviously there is Chernobyl, but the failures and shortcomings seem to not only be understood but popularized by Western media and we can say "oh that was just the Soviet Union." Then Fukushima happened, in a country which seems to be far better than the US at building efficient, safe infrastructure. We could say that was a fluke and we will learn from it (and I'm sure we will), but how many more times will we need to learn to avoid the literal fallout of another nuclear disaster? Shit goes wrong sometimes and you can't predict it.
You can argue that it's still safer (obviously there are lots of nuclear power plants in the US that have had no huge disasters), but why not look at alternatives that are even safer?