Why not? If someone is buying power from coal instead of you when you have lower costs, that's money you're leaving on the table.

I'm sure there's lots of ways it could happen. Off the top of my head - you can't just snap your fingers and start selling power, you need to build the reactors, scale out infrastructure, etc etc. There's huge expenditure involved. If you have a giant pile of money in the bank, earning interest, it might not be worth your while to spend it on that.

Another point - how much do you charge for the power? If your goal is to get people to switch, the answer is "as little as you can". If your goal is to make money, the answer is "as much as you can".

> If you have a giant pile of money in the bank, earning interest, it might not be worth your while to spend it on that.

But that's the case either way. If the technology was public domain, somebody would still have to pay to build the reactors, and then it's even harder to raise capital because with more competition there is less profit.

> If your goal is to make money, the answer is "as much as you can".

But "as much as you can" really means "just under what existing alternatives cost" -- because getting people to switch is how you make money. You don't make money by losing customers to competitors.