Its very similar. Most people "at risk" for a accident in a nuclear power plant are the workers. There are multiple redundancies that make sure dangerous levels of radioactive isotopes are not released to the public. Thats why every western nuclear power plant has required containment buildings basically forever. Chernobyl didn't, which is why it affected the environment / nearby people.
No containment is perfect. In French nuclear plants it has to "contain" most of the stuff for at least 72 hours, but no one sees it as a sealed repository and it sure isn't.
You set the bar too high. Radiation isn't an all-or-nothing phenomenon; we are exposed to background radiation all the time, so expecting perfection is unjustified. Also a large portion of radioactivity that might escape comes from short-lived isotopes, making short term evacuation a possibility.
The bar is the comparison with the other set of pertinent electricity-generating equipments: renewables.
The LNT debate isn't settled, effects of added background radiation is difficult to assess. Moreover the dust escaping from a nuclear plant may be inhaled, ingested... ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committed_dose ).
A "large portion" isn't all, and at Fukushima the nuclear accident-triggered evacuation officially made around 2200 victims.
> The bar is the comparison with the other set of pertinent electricity-generating equipments: renewables.
> A "large portion" isn't all
Setting the bar too high.
> The LNT debate isn't settled
Indeed the evidence for effects at smaller and longer term doses is at best weak. We also have a good idea of how DNA repair works. But LNT seems like the least unreasonable conservative way to treat radiation, which may be replaced by something in the up-coming ICRP modernisation.
> Moreover the dust escaping
What sort of dust is this?
> nuclear accident-triggered evacuation officially made around 2200 victims
Car or plane, the people most exposed to the risk have some choice in the matter - to fly, drive, or be around vehicles.
New considerations are introduced when those exposed to the risks of your choice maybe hundreds of miles away with no say, or even yet to be born.