The US required backup generators to be in a safe zone for like a dozen years if the plant was in an area that could get tsunamis for Fukushima type generators. Japan was building them, but they were too late for some of them. Japan is entirely at fault for what happened at Fukushima - they knew the reactors were vulnerable and delayed fixing the issue until it was too late.
Meanwhile, coal and natural gas plants spew out radiation every day and don't get anywhere near the scrutiny they deserve. You want rads? Live near coal and natural gas. I lived downwind from a coal plant for 20 years. If I get cancer, it is 99% likely it was due to coal.
Oh, so save the world with wind and solar? You depend on China to mine rare earth elements (95% are mined in China) and they dump radioactive elements into open air dumps that seep into the water system because they have no pollution control laws, which is why they are way cheaper than US mining (the US has lots of REE, but also restrictive pollution control laws). The generators need to be built in China because they require it to fuel their economy. Nuclear and wind power have about the same ratio of damage to the environment. Solar is, in fact, worse (slightly).
So yeah, nuclear has its issues, but so do coal, gas, wind, and hydro (didn't mention it yet, but has a horrible rate of deaths during construction). Geothermal is probably best, but has restrictive range. Also, geothermal is basically fission power, therefore nuclear.
All that said, 4th gen nuclear will almost universally burn near all its fuel (so yeah, nuclear waste is fuel), can't melt down (or is melted into a salt), be FAR more fuel efficient, be hopefully less a proliferation issue (but could be), and basically be far safer (passive safety is a requirement). There are some serious issues that need to be addressed, mostly due to corrosion, but a lot of the issues anti-nuclear activists push forward are addressed by 4th gen nuclear.