Re: Fusion might work someday. Fission works *now*.
Quite to the contrary, many of the experiment sin the last 20-30 years into fusion has met or exceeded its goals (JET as an example). The goal of these experiments was not to produce an excess of energy but to take steps towards that. The excess energy comes with scale, small scale test tokamaks wouldn't generate an excess or a sustained reaction. ITER will be the first fusion reactor designed to produce a surplus (generating 10 times more than it uses), DEMO (generating 25 times more than it uses, and on an continual basis) will be the first fusion power station (ITER generates an excess but it isn't harnessed for electrical generation). The scientists have been playing it safe and working up to a surplus, because if they had built a commercial scale 2000-4000MW surplus fusion plant theres a fair chance there would be a smouldering hole in Oxfordshire. The problem they have encountered is the delays in all the politiking between countries.
With respect to who should be in charge of the operation of Nuclear plants, you are entirely correct. We are screwed. Companies will seek profit over safety to the point of buying politicians to allow them to cut corners. Politicians will be bought so they are out. The general public (which not exactly stupid) will make decisions based on FUD, gut instinct and potentially greed. Scientists by and large (as can be seen by expert witness testimony in courts) can be bought and sold just as politicians can. Frankly (and this is by no means meant to be disrespectful) I would rather see you in charge, you seem to have a balanced and realistic outlook.
The only other way I can think of dealing with it is creating a solid link between the management (C level + board) of the company and the results of any disasters. i.e. if you want to have a nuclear power plant the entire management will live next to it, go for a swim once a week by the outflow and eat the local shellfish. When it is their families and their well being on the line I think they may pay a little less attention to suggestions about cutting corners to save a quarter of a percent in costs. If you look at windscale, fukushima, 3 mile island and chernobyl, all were preventable or manageable. Windscale piles were built in a hurry and no one went back to fix errors, fukushima didn't have a wall high enough (and the placing of nuclear reactors next to the shore in a country prone to earthquakes and tsunamis is dubious), 3 mile island could have been prevented by better training, the list goes on.
The people making the decisions, those with oversight, don't have to live with the consequences. They don't end up with cancer, they don't end up paying out of their own pockets for clean ups, yet they get the financial benefits from cost cutting. The sooner they do the sooner we will see a rapid improvement in safety. You can bet the minute that law came in there would be a hell of a lot of meetings and site visits from suits the normal workers had never seen before.