Nuclear power plants can be state-owned, and commonly are outside the US. For example, all Canadian nuclear power reactors are owned by provincial governments (about half of Ontario's reactors are on long term lease to a private operator under a public-private partnership deal, but the reactors are still government owned). In France, the company which owns and operates all the reactors in the country is majority owned by the French state.

Requiring generating assets to be owned and operated by private enterprises seems to be a primarily American phenomenon.