That is largely because due to green lobbyists making sure that nuclear is subjected to greater regulatory oversight and financial barriers than other sources of energy.
I'm sorry that I'm not that familiar with the German regulatory situation, but here in the USA for example new nuclear plants are required to pre-fund their decommissioning costs upfront before they are ever turned on, and have insurance against accidents, etc. Which is probably a good thing and I'm not arguing against--except that literally no other source of energy is subject to the same requirements. And so when people say "nuclear is expensive!" they are comparing apples-to-oranges.
A coal or natural gas plant generates literal tonnes of environmental waste that they don't need to pay to clean up, and they aren't required to have insurance or bonds against the much more likely industrial accidents their workers and community members will suffer.
Same for solar, which would be a heck of a lot more expensive if solar installation companies had to insure millions of dollars against their workers falling off roofs, or pre-pay the costs of smelting solar panels that reach end of life so their parts don't end up in land fills.
Nuclear isn't expensive. The nuclear energy and regulatory environment is. As it was designed to be by people who don't want nuclear power.
It is expensive because any large unit of capital in a public works context is expensive. (A clear majority of this cost is in unavoidable structural corruption tax.) On top of that, operating a nuke is very expensive: this is where fuel cycle costs come in, including mining, refining, processing, and disposing, as well as others like fixing turbines and guarding access. On top of that, shutting one down is expensive. None of these costs are falling, while alternative cost are, so, relatively, they are all sharply increasing.
(Coal, oil, and gas are also expensive, mainly in environmental effects, and their costs are also increasing, relative to renewables. They do not count here, except in how they contribute to renewables construction cost, where they fall as their contribution to that cost does.)
Insurance for construction accidents, and disposal costs, are figured in: silicon panels and wind turbine blades are inert, so cheap to dispose of. CdTe panels and rare-earth magnets are valuable, already-refined chemicals, and are reclaimed.
Each cost alone makes nukes more expensive than alternatives. All added up, they make nukes ruinously expensive.
>That is largely because due to green lobbyists making sure that nuclear is subjected to greater regulatory oversight and financial barriers than other sources of energy.
Even if this was true (which I don't think it is) then what are you proposing? Relaxing the regulations?
I'm sorry that I'm not that familiar with the German regulatory situation, but here in the USA for example new nuclear plants are required to pre-fund their decommissioning costs upfront before they are ever turned on, and have insurance against accidents, etc. Which is probably a good thing and I'm not arguing against--except that literally no other source of energy is subject to the same requirements. And so when people say "nuclear is expensive!" they are comparing apples-to-oranges.
A coal or natural gas plant generates literal tonnes of environmental waste that they don't need to pay to clean up, and they aren't required to have insurance or bonds against the much more likely industrial accidents their workers and community members will suffer.
Same for solar, which would be a heck of a lot more expensive if solar installation companies had to insure millions of dollars against their workers falling off roofs, or pre-pay the costs of smelting solar panels that reach end of life so their parts don't end up in land fills.
Nuclear isn't expensive. The nuclear energy and regulatory environment is. As it was designed to be by people who don't want nuclear power.