[AnthonyMouse]

> Because of those catastrophic failure modes, nobody except governments want to assume the risk.

That would be a fine if it was a level playing field.

Lots of things have catastrophic failure modes. Dams[1], supertankers[2], chemical plants[3], oil drilling rigs[4], coal mines[5], etc. To say nothing of climate change.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exxon_Valdez_oil_spill [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benxihu_Colliery

The reason those things have no trouble being built anyway is that they aren't required to carry billions of dollars in insurance coverage to begin with.

And maybe they should, but you can't single out nuclear for a requirement to carry that much insurance and then fault it for not being able to satisfy that requirement when its competitors don't.