Nothing is entirely safe. The fact is, even accounting for Chernobyl and Fukushima, nuclear energy is one of the safest ways to generate power we know of on a deaths-per-TWh metric: https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy

I'm not an expert, but apparently, there are new designs that are inherently safe in the sense that meltdown will never happen even in case of total power failure. But of course, nuclear waste management is a contentious issue.

Hydro power generation has killed over a hundred thousand people, yet we are still building, and using hydro dams.

Nuclear is safe compared to the alternatives.

And the region in which those hundred-thousand-plus were killed ... is now home to some 7 millions of souls.

Hydro power, for much the same organisational, political, and disaster response reasons as nuclear, which is to say, non-technical reasons, can be exceedingly risky.

But once the immediate hazard is resolved, over the course of months to years, the region returns to normal.

The immediate innundation from Banqiao was responsible for ~25k deaths. The additional 100k or so came from starvation and disease due to widespread disruption of the region, and a grossly inadequate disaster response plan and capability.

Organisational / institutional failures at Chernobyl, Fukushima, and for that matter, Hanford and Sellafield, were and are massive contributing factors. You cannot engineer around those.

If Japan had hundreds of acres of solar panels back when the tsunami occurred, they would be resting out on the ocean floor, leaching heavy metals into the water. Definitely better, right?