Japanese engineering at it's core is grit and resilience (”fall down seven times, stand up eight”）. Japan's architecture prowess comes from waves and waves of catastrophes they've overcome and rebuilt upon.

For Japan to be that good at nuclear, there first needs to be a way to gracefully fail and retry, instead of making whole regions unhabitable for a century. We're clearly not there yet.

It's always been surprising to me that they don't have more geothermal power generation. Seems liked they should be well-positioned for that.

TBF Geothermal sounds a lot more complex on the economical side than other renewable sources.

Japan probably has the technology to deal with many of the downsides (additional sysmic risk, pollution, volcanic activity straight destroying the installation etc.) but it might not have the initial money nor a decent enough ROI to maintain the system.