Nuclear has been "failing" for decades. The TVA plant that recently came online was started 43 years ago.

Nuclear has a long, storied history of costing multiples of estimates at every stage -- building, operation, decommissioning, etc. And as the GP mentioned, black swan events ("it couldn't possibly happen...oh it happened well that's not a true Scotsman") are so enormous that it needs government to take the liability.

The original budget was 5 billion. I am curious what all changed in the design to make it triple (they still had many billions left to complete) the costs over the budget? was it crappy budgeting in the first place? bad project management? huge changes in requirements after Fukishama?

Gas has actually been this cheap before, and for a long time so. 20 years ago oil cost less than a third than it is now, and yet then fossil fuel prices weren't an issue.

The real reason is deeper than that. Nuclear is simply put very very expensive and has a high risk attached to it.

Back then lots of politicians were willing to steal from taxpayers and ratepayers because of some nebulous idea that we needed more nuclear weapons and nuclear power was somehow related to that. Now, that's less true.