Statistics won't help you if one of those "every 20 years" disasters hit a highly populated area like Europe. The technology will still look "safe" on paper but you'd have depopulated a huge area and maybe even killed people or keep on killing through cancer.
This is not "statistics" it is simple facts. Japan is highly populated.
"Very rarely" is not enough to justify thousands of years of uninhabitable square kilometres.
Except that doesn't happen.
The former inhabitants of Pripyat and the Fukushima exclusion zone are thrilled to hear that.