Incentives make a big difference here. Ignoring everything else, airlines don't want to lose their hundred million dollar machine in an accident. And the person most directly responsible for the safety of the flight -- the pilot -- is sitting right there in the machine with the rest of us. It's a good arrangement with a long track record.
I could imagine corporate-run nuclear plants that have the same incentives as airlines. I could also imagine bad ones, run by Homer Simpson. It probably makes more sense to judge case by case.
Airlines are also different from power utilities, in that it's very easy to change airlines and not very easy to change grid operators. After Fukushima it's not like consumers could switch to a power utility other than TEPCO.
So how exactly do you enforce that corporate executives and their families must live on site for decades?
https://news.yahoo.com/federal-utility-fined-900k-nuclear-21...
> In a notice dated Nov. 6, regulators noted a “substantial safety culture issue” at Watts Bar at the time of the incident. They also found that “TVA senior management and staff failed to communicate with candor, clarity, and integrity during several interactions with the NRC during the course of the inspection and investigation.”
> The incident wasn't recorded in the plant's logbook and managers later misled NRC investigators about what had happened. The shift manager told investigators he wasn't truthful with them at first because he feared that whatever he said would be relayed back to management.
> last year, TVA was ordered to rehire and pay thousands of dollars in back pay and compensation to a whistleblower who raised concerns about nuclear safety.
And then there was the nuclear corruption scandal in South Korea: https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/04/22/136020/how-greed...
And let's not forget when a nuclear company literally bribed Ohio politicians with $60M to get a $1Bn+ bailout:
https://www.cleveland.com/open/2020/07/fbi-agents-deployed-t...