I think in both cases we took designs that promised to be totally impossible to meltdown and then through either incompetence or bad luck melted them down. So h

I think in both cases we took designs that promised to be totally impossible to meltdown and then through either incompetence or bad luck melted them down. So how can we KNOW that today's "totally impossible to meltdown" design is not just safe, but safe when run incompetently and during an external disaster? This is the core issue with nuclear: I don't really care about the factory or power station 1km from my house because if it burns down, it will be a small inconvenience to me. But a nuclear plant, even one 50km away, has the potential to kill me. How do you manage that risk? I worry that right now a lot of the push is basically an appeal to authority ("engineers know how to design reactors"). But those same authorieis are undermined by both their source of funding and their historic record. That's the real issue here: we used up our credibility and don't have any left and can't work without it.