All of these changes would favour solar + battery to a rather ridiculous degree. Especially given recycling PV is already mandatory in civilised countries and c

All of these changes would favour solar + battery to a rather ridiculous degree. Especially given recycling PV is already mandatory in civilised countries and costs very little (and will likely be revenue positive as supply chains mature). Nuclear waste management funds would also have to increase, the industry would have to pay its fair share for security and liability limits (ie. Free public insurance) would have to go away to be fair as well. The nuclear industry would also have to actually remediate the uranium mines which it has historically never done. Wind also has to pay for decomissioning in many cases, and it doesn't really alter the costs because dealing with 10kg/kW of fiberglass is insignificant and recycling the other materials is revenue positive. You'd also be double charging many renewable projects (especially offshore wind) because the frequently include the costs of transmission. And every time your nuclear plant at one end of the state went offline for two months for refuelling and maintenance you'd be paying more than the wind turbines for transmission. If your impossible to solve for or fairly charge market came about, the net result is no-one would build anything other than parking lot and commercial rooftop solar + battery storage or at-site renewables for industrial until around 60-90% of demand was met. Then nuclear still wouldn't be remotely viable, but it would be harder to build wind and pumped hydro. And your fantasy about 70s reactors is based on them getting free money, a workforce with free training, free design work, using completely different accounting methods and resulting in designs that were only online half the time. During entire period before TMI construction costs were rising >20% yoy. The incoherence of the claims about APRs being cheaper than big heavy reactors, then bigger heavier reactors being cheaper, then SMRs being cheaper all for opposite reasons would be kind of amusing if public officials didn't keep falling for them. > What prevents this seems to be regulations at every level, where nuclear is burdened with all sorts of extra costs, ranging from insane security requirements and other red tape, limits on pricing in many markets, having to pay for the extra grid capacity required by renewable sources, excessive taxes or deposits for externalities that is not required for other energy sources. These 'ridiculous' regulations constantly prove themselves necessary for preventing multi-trillion dollar damages to the public. Barely a year goes by where there isn't an operator or builder caught doing at least one and often two of the five simultaneous colossally stupid things that have to happen simultaneously to cause a proper meltdown. The strict rules are the only reason there's yet to be an actually bad plant failure or mishandling of Pu239 or waste. Even with regulations preventing a major failure, ukraine and japan are spending enough on cleanup and economic damage to use up over half of your $20/MWh for every joule ever produced by a nuclear reactor anywhere on the planet.