The high cost of nuclear _is the reason_ we still burn coal. If we hadn't over-regulated it 50 years ago there wouldn't be a coal power plant left in the countr

The high cost of nuclear _is the reason_ we still burn coal. If we hadn't over-regulated it 50 years ago there wouldn't be a coal power plant left in the country, and tens of millions of human-years would have been saved over the past several decades. And it's because we completely ignored the safety risks of coal while hyper-focusing on nuclear. There is no mythical "zero risk" power generation. Everything is context dependent. It is potentially true that at this point, cheap energy storage is close enough to make 100% renewable a reality and therefore that it's too late to make the switch to nuclear (although I'm not entirely convinced), but failing to switch fifty years ago is one of the greatest civilizational mistakes humanity has made.