What in America's past suggests that we would build and maintain plants better than Fukushima? Is it our mismanagement of waterways? Our disaster preparedness and response as evidenced after Hurricane Katrina? Our laser-sharp focus on energy policy in government?

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.

All are systems engineering failures, we have a pretty good history of building resilient systems. I won't say that a fukushima couldn't happen in the US, but I'd say that the particulars of that disaster are unlikely to happen here (or anywhere else again).

We have very few nuclear plants in areas that are even seismically active anymore, much less have any meaningful tsunami risk.

As another commenter pointed out, a lot of the knowledge for developing nuclear power plants has faded since they were mostly built decades ago. And while they're smaller projects, looking around where I live (San Francisco) I see a leaning skyscraper, a bridge that was way, way overbudget and many years late and an ongoing debate about its longterm safety, and a transit center (also late and overbudget) that still hasn't opened due to safety concerns.

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.