Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nuclear plants are the worst possible way to reduce energy costs. They are also incredibly massive single points of failure, so they tend to reduce reliability compared to more distributed smaller generation units. Germany, for example, has seen reliability increase massively as they shift towards more distributed renewables, even though it's not a super high penetration level. As we shift to more renewables and star…
That's really not justifiable unless you assume nuclear construction costs in the out-of-practice west apply everywhere, always and forever. To think this is to completely disregard the amazing nuclear builds in China (see Hualong One), the UAE (3 APR-1400s build by the Koreans), Russia (lots of VVERs), etc. At the costs they're delivering, current low-carbon 24/7 nuclear is a rock-solid choice. Solar photovoltaic an…
To be completely fair, the development of nuclear power took governments and would have been impossible otherwise. Solar and wind, not so much. The problem with nuclear is only cost, not NIMBY and before it is said so, it certainly is not the regulations jacking the cost of nuclear so high. If nuclear power was economically viable, you could not beat off the investors. The trouble is, the investors don't want to pay the $15B or so it costs to build a single plant, nor the cost of decommissioning, nor for the cost of storing the waste effectively forever, plus the cost of securing that, and certainly not for any accidents, as improbable as they may be. They just want to sell electricity and profit, and leave the government with the responsibility of paying for all the things.
And really to be fair, the cost of R&D for nuclear power has never been paid back. Pay the US and UK taxpayers back for the R&D and you can have all the nuclear power plants you want.