[evilos]

I'm talking about financial risk btw, not safety risk.

Any large project like a dam or nuclear plant is risky from a financial perspective. You're putting up a lot of capital and probably paying a lot of interest. Larger projects in general tend to run over schedule and over budget too. Back in the day, the US was better at building big things and using public funds for them so it wasn't as risky. Add in the mountain of paper work that the regulators now require for everything nuclear and you have a very high risk project.

It doesn't have to be this way. Other countries have shown that you can consistently build these projects on time and in 4 to 5 years if you have an experienced work force, solid supply chain, and a reasonable regulator. Japan holds the record for a gigawatt scale reactor built in just over 36 months.