China disagrees with you. They're building a bunch of AP-1000s, the same new GenIII+ design we're building in the U.S. "The timeline is 50 months from first concrete to fuel loading, then six months to grid connection for the first four units, with this expected to reduce significantly for the following units."

http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pro...

There are also a bunch of companies working on small modular reactors built in factories and shipped to the install site, which I think would qualify as "shortcuts in the offing." Some of this work is supported by the DOE.