It's not really the ahead of time NIMBY complaints but the potential for future liability shifts which existing plants will not be exempt from. A good number of plants constructed in the 60s and 70s hit their EOL (after getting a a bunch of lifetime extensions from governments) and then had their nice glittering warchest of profits eaten away by cleanup expenses (which sometimes exceeded the cash left in those contingency funds with the deficit falling on state & local governments). There have been issues with water contamination due to poor holding pool sealing and due to unforseen natural disasters.

Nuclear power requires millions in its initial investment. It has a not-insignificant profit margin over other power sources, but it also has a significant chance for large liabilities (more often due to changing laws than meltdowns). The result is an investment with an extremely high investment threshold (you don't build small nuke plants) with a decent short term prospect and a poor long term prospect that's extremely hard to get out of. This makes nuclear a really bad option for private investors when held up in comparison to tech and the like.

Meltdowns can happen and they're catastrophic but the bigger impediment is the unpredictable legal and fiscal liabilities involved. And, honestly, it's my personal opinion that a fair amount of these post-de-facto fiscal liabilities are extremely just and fairly applied - they're externalities we were ignoring decades ago.

This is a segment of the market where we need government funding and guarantees to get things done - and we should do so since nuclear is an extremely safe and clean option for power generation.

I wonder if any improvements could be made to mitigate some of these risks considering we’ve had 50-60 years to learn.

The unfortunate thing is that the extreme lack of investment in nuclear energy means we don't have a ton of experts in this area.

Let's ask the ad engineers. :) I don't like the historical alternatives but our current society (in general) approach for social-economical organization reached it's threshold and made us waste human potential tackling artificial problems while ignoring those that were right in front of us. But who knows as those "blind investments" generated knowledge that might be critical for the next decades.

> Nuclear is able to compete on merit and has been forever

Hmmm https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49823305

"Hinkley Point C nuclear plant to run £2.9bn over budget"

> Last week, prices for new wind power delivered by 2025 were set at prices as low as £40 per megawatt hour. By comparison, power from Hinkley Point C is expected to cost £92.50 per megawatt hour.

I don't think NIMBYs are the only problem. Nuclear is just too expensive to build and maintain, especially with dirt-cheap renewables and storage coming down too. I have some hope that SMRs or something will end up working out, but like you say, I think it's mostly too late.

> Nuclear is able to compete on merit

If that were the case, then this would not be required: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10821

Only because any accidents, while rare, are incredibly high profile.

Where's the compensation for all the deaths due to coal plants? Unlike nuclear, they spew carcinogenic crap in the atmosphere by design. And some radioactivity too.