Because it's currently much more expensive than solar and wind, even when you factor in the costs of dealing with intermittency.
Even if public perception weren't an obstacle, and even if you didn't have to deal with waste storage, and even if building nuclear plants wasn't a glacially slow process, it just doesn't make economic sense to focus on nuclear anymore.
For example, Germany is pushing for solar and wind cos Siemens is producing those and its popular cos people somehow think there are no drawbacks to them… They could have operated their nuclear plants for at least another decade of there was political will for it…
Nuclear power plants seem to take a long time to get right, which means they end up being very expensive.
As an example, consider the new Olkiluoto-3 nuclear plant built in Finland. That reactor was commission just a few months ago, but its build was 12 years behind schedule. The delay to that project saw the original 3 billion Euro price tag more than triple with a final cost closer to 11 billion.
It would be perfectly fine if we just landfilled wind turbines and solar panels. It's not like silicon or fiberglass are rare. The whole recycling business here is more fetish than obstacle.
There are problems with recycling in general. For example, the overuse of plastics, with no sensible recycling plan means we have plastic garbage patch twice the size of Texas floating around in the Pacific Ocean.
These problems are generally not about recycling, but rather the willingness of governments to legislate sensible solutions.
What do you mean by "efficient"? Engineering efficiency? They use different inputs, so comparing that is meaningless. Economic efficiency? No, they're much less economically efficient. That's why so much more solar (and wind) are being installed now instead of nuclear.
> I doubt that somehow, reason we are pushing wind and solar is cos people think it is “green” and “renewable” and are scared of nuclear.
This is utter nonsense. The reason wind and solar are being pushed is they are so much cheaper than nuclear (and this will remain true even at high renewable uptake when storage is required). This is widely understood; where did you get the bizarre incorrect belief that it was otherwise?
Nuclear was so out of the running in the US that many existing NPPs had to be shut down because they were cash flow negative. It wasn't worth running them even with the construction and financing costs completely written off. The remaining reactor at Three Mile Island, for example, had not made an operating profit for six years before it was shut down.
This was done due to environmental factors, not as a financial instrument.
> and are scared of nuclear.
That part is definitely true. After seeing that even a high-tech nation like Japan couldn't keep their nuclear reactors safe, nuclear was no longer seen as a viable option.
Even if public perception weren't an obstacle, and even if you didn't have to deal with waste storage, and even if building nuclear plants wasn't a glacially slow process, it just doesn't make economic sense to focus on nuclear anymore.