$0.55/kWh is in line with California PG&E peak residential rates.

These are the prices for end customers and contain various taxes, surcharges for transmission and various other things. All of these costs are real and it's good to have them as a part of the actual price. You know what it actually costs and it's a good motivation to be energy efficient.

Compare it to France which has the highest market prices in Europe right now [1] (and also last year) but allegedly the customers pay just 22c. It can't work - the nationalization of the EDF was started last year [2] and it posted a 20 billion loss [3]. The true price will be paid one way or the other, through taxes in this case.

[1] https://mobile.twitter.com/energy_charts/status/163859905194...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jul/19/france-to-p...

[3] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2023/02/17/france-s...

The US indeed has a similar cost level but it just puts that out in tax form or takes on more debt. Result: lots of outdated infrastructure and plants like this and companies that leave their mess for tax payers to clean up rather than investing themselves. Like in this case with a nuclear plant that was bought last year and promptly shut down by its new owner. Why would they buy such an old plant at the end of its life?

Now instead of taking the cost of decommissioning it (which costs lots of money) they are now looking to reopen it using public funding. So, they are happy to profit from this deal but not without public funding. The permit is probably less of an issue than finding the hundreds of millions needed to refurbish this plant. Kind of weird if you look at it like that. Until of course you realize that the prospect of public funding was the whole reason for this company to buy this plant. Basically, tax payers and consumers take all the risk. They take the profit. That's how the nuclear business works. Never mind that this plant still needs to be shut down and decommissioned eventually. Who is going to be paying for that?