Nuclear is arguably only safe due to those regulations. The case of falsified certificates in Korea shows that you need plenty of margins to account for some of the regulations not being followed properly, even in a first world country.

Maybe there is 20% too many regulations. That could be the case. But having 20% too many regulations is far preferable than 20% too few.

Even if you are staunchly pro-nuclear you should want regulations that reduces the chance for even a minor accident to almost exactly 0%, because even a minor accident will cause fear that’ll set nuclear back by two decades. Maybe that fear is irrational. Tough luck. Humans are irrational. Most of them would rather be slowly poisoned by coal and die a couple years early, than living with the thought of maybe having to suddenly have to abandon their home and established life like in Fukushima.

> But having 20% too many regulations is far preferable than 20% too few.

The problem is when that extra 20% regulation makes the technology so expensive the world chooses to keep burning coal, oil and gas thus poisoning and killing millions through pollution and endangering life on the entire planet through Climate Change.

Right now nuclear is so frozen and so useful that I'd take the change of a (PR) disaster and (slowly, carefully, partially) deregulate: it can't get much worse than already is.

Nuclear is not so expensive because of regulation that's another myth. Considering the scale and possible impact wind and solar often have much more regulations (just look at Bavaria where the ruling party essentially blocked all new wind installations by creating requirements that reduced potential sites to nearly 0). A nuclear power plant is essentially a thermal plant plus the nuclear part so how would it be cheaper than a coal plant?

I'm not disputing your claims, but as a suggestion:

> A nuclear power plant is essentially a thermal plant plus the nuclear part so how would it be cheaper than a coal plant?

Fuel costs?

I was talking capital costs, not operational costs. My point is, to build a nuclear power plant you essentially need to build a thermal power plant first and then add things for the nuclear part (which is arguably more complicated/safety critical than for e.g. a coal plant).

So the whole argument for economics of scale doesn't work, thermal power plants have not reduced dramatically in price over the last decades despite lots of them being build. Half of your plant not really reducing much in price, will limit the benefits you can get even if the other half sees massive cost reductions.

> I was talking capital costs, not operational costs.

Ok, but surely the only cost that matters is the lifetime cost? (Including whatever cleanup is needed for both nuclear and whichever fossil and/or renewable+storage combination it is compared against).

> Half of your plant not really reducing much in price, will limit the benefits you can get even if the other half sees massive cost reductions.

Sure, absolutely. But coal is pretty expensive over the course of a year, so it can look like a good opportunity (if only for the reality hadn't turned out so fragile and, when it goes wrong, severe).