Humans are lazy and greedy and stupid. But that applies to everything, and nuclear is responsible for fewer deaths per TWh of power generated than anything you're proposing as a "dirty" alternative.
> When dealing with potentially "forever" contaminants, this is simply unacceptable.
This is factually not what we are dealing with. The radioactivity of a substance is inversely proportional to its half life. In other words, the more radioactive something is, the faster it disappears.
The most problematic nuclear contaminants are therefore the ones with medium half lives (i.e. decades), because they're radioactive enough to be harmful but long-lived enough to still be there a week later.
This is nasty stuff, but not in any way "forever" and not particularly any nastier than a lot of the chemical substances industries deal with on a large scale all over the place, which are chemically rather than radiologically hazardous and therefore don't even have a half life, i.e. they really are there forever. How is a nuclear reactor worse than a chemical plant?
> Ans since human nature and psychology is not going to magically evolve over the next couple of centuries, and since there's no such thing as a foolproof design, reducing nuclear power is a pragmatic approach, even if it causes a temporary increase in dirtier energy production (up to a point, of course).
Considering that coal is responsible for more radioactive emissions than nuclear per TWh produced including Chernobyl and Fukushima, that is a totally irresponsible and dangerous course of action.