The "Cultural Revolution" began in 1966.
In such a context an otherwise avoidable catastrophe may happen.
This Revolution followed the "Great Leap Forward" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward ), with famines. "In the subsequent famines of the early 1960s popularly attributed to the Great Leap Forward, Henan was one of the hardest hit and millions of lives were lost." Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henan#Modern_Era .
Moreover all this came after a civil war and a violent Japanese invasion, during which dams were bombed, causing "massive flooding in Henan" (same source).
Then a typhoon hit and many dams collapsed ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure#The_c... )
During decades predicting and adverting this catastrophe was possible, even when it unfolded people had days to react... but given such a context nobody was able to do so. One may wonder what an active nuclear reactor will become in such a context.
Estimations of nuclear power disasters are highly disputed, and some claims are very high ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl:_Consequences_of_the... )
Also: you compare nuclear to fossil fuels, neglecting renewables.