I work in Nuclear power and people's reactions like this always seem a bit bizzare to me. The Uk currently has 15 working nuclear power reactors, one right next to where HPC is being built. The safety standards in this country are unbelievabley tight and there is no way they would be allowed to operate if they were unsafe.
Chernobyl was a completely different reactor and they turned off all the safety functions and the positive coefficient of reactivity meant it didn't just shut itself down like ours would.
Fukishima other than the the operators who were killed by the wave on site there hasn't been one nuclear related death due to the crisis management being so good. It should be noted as well that the sea wall being too short and the generators being in the basement was pointed out as an issue multiple times but due to the how Japanese Hierachies are they never followed up on it.
It seems bizarre you are worried about nuclear waste but want a return to coal power stations which produce a much more radioactive biproduct which cannot be reprocessed unlike uranium. That's ignoring how damaging to the enviroment burning coal every day it.
There have been 100s of Nuclear power plants operated in the UK, France, Germany and Scandanavia with zero issues ever. The only reason other countries have gone back to coal is it is an easy win for any government due to the scewed public perception of how dangerous nuclear power is. It's viewed in the same way as plane crashes because of how destructive the odd crash every 10s of years can be people only look at the consequences and not how unlikely something going wrong actually is.