Chernobyl took out Welsh farming for years, and in a few places decades, because it spread a thin layer of bioaccumulative poison over the whole of Europe.
Know what else spreads a thin layer of poison over the whole of the world? Coal power.
Democracy just as lazy and apathetic is whatever the USSR counts as; the point of capitalism (which is different to democracy) redirect the laziness into something more productive — this works to an extent, but depends on competition which is greatly reduced in the case of nuclear reactors.
That it's a different axis than democracy-communism is also why the not-at-all-democratic military reactors around the world seem to be doing fine.