Nevertheless one should never take this as guaranteed. Nuclear power plants should be carefully designed everything-proof wherever they are built.
Whether or not the nuclear plant survives intact is a bit of a minor issue. It just has to fail without being orders of magnitude worse than the earthquake.
Citing Fukushima - Fukushima was bad. Bud the mounds of corpses caused by the natural disaster that also caused Fukushima are a far more important thing to spend resources preventing than Fukushima itself was.
You're overlooking the exaggerated panic-and-horror reaction of the public to literally any kind of nuclear incident. If you design merely for statistically acceptable results it's basically guaranteeing political blowback at some point.
Wait until you learn about a thing called COVID-19.
There is an objective ordering to what should be earthquake-proofed. Nuclear plants are not actually at the top of the list to worry about - places where people are likely to live and work are. Draw up a list of things that hurt people around the time of the Fukushima disaster. Fukushima barely makes the list. Fukushima might not even be on the list, the toll in human suffering of Fukushima is very small compared to the natural disaster that hit Japan that day.
We can also overbuild the nuclear plant because nuclear is so crazily efficient why not. There is only one plant to secure. But it isn't a blocker if it doesn't happen, and it is an irrational concern.
If I could, I would earthquake-proof and flood-proof everything even where the probability of these dissertation is near-zero. But this obviously isn't going to happen (in fact it baffles me how people insist on living non-proof way even in areas where disastrous floods actually happen every now and then).
Nevertheless I feel like I would prefer my home destroyed and even myself crippled over the neighboring nuclear power plant blowing up.
How much have you thought about it? Again, Fukushima, one of the worst nuclear disasters of all time. As far as I know nobody crippled.
I'd go for the plant meltdown myself, I like life, liberty and having use of my legs. It is reasonably likely that nobody would get hurt in a meltdown, the damage is largely economic.
I am a proponent of nuclear power generation nevertheless.
Why? Even purely on that scenario you'r cutting off your leg to avoid a typically undetectable statistical risk.
We've got 50 years of records on the risk of plant meltdowns, a surprise earthquake hitting homes that aren't prepared is much, much worse than a nuclear plant meltdown. An earthquake will kill people. There will be deaths. Destruction. Suffering on a scale that is much worse than a nuclear meltdown.
You should earthquake proof your house if you think that is a possible risk.
http://www.chernobylgallery.com/chernobyl-disaster/radiation...
So no, I do not buy into the "basically forever".