>Nuclear seems to only work if nation-states build and operate it directly - no private firm can build them profitably and on time.
Nation states are not able to run the plants profitably either, they just don't run out of money.
Look at France, the US, UK, Germany and Japan for example. They all have immense costs related to nuclear power that is not covered by the sale of nuclear electricity.
Yeah, but if your intent is to support industry by having cheap energy costs that works out for you. Same reason public transit and police run at a loss, in theory.
>Yeah, but if your intent is to support industry by having cheap energy costs that works out for you
Short-term perhaps, but pretending that something expensive is cheap doesn't really work in the long run.
Investments are supposed to be an initial cost upfront that pays off later. Like building roads, bridges and such. For energy, an investment would be to take the cost of a renewable infrastructure, energy storage, solar roofs and such. Once they are in place they have minimal costs and give extremely cheap and reliable energy (reliable because of the distribution and redundancy).
Nuclear is kind of the opposite, you get the payoff upfront but have to pay an unknown amount basically forever afterwards. This cost eventually catches up to you.
France today is in a manner of speaking still paying for electricity they consumed in the 80s and 90s by bailing out EDF. Yet the common opinion still seems to be that they have "cheap electricity".
I think France has the most expensive energy infrastructure in Europe, and it will sooner or later become impossible to pretend otherwise.