this is nonsense. Take german plants - zero subsidies for operation, plants were built mostly by private sector.
In France - no CFD's for existing units, plants were constructed by govt for about 150bn. In comparison Germany spent on EEG subsidies double of that and you can see the result in emissions...
Really? Which private sector built nuclear power plants in East Germany? In West Germany most plants were constructed by state-controlled enterprises and there were no expectation of them to ever reach profitability.
it wasn't fully state controlled enterprises in the west - state was a partial owner. For example PreussenElektra, when it built plants was a publicly traded company and during Grohnde state mostly divested from it. Plants not only reached profitability but were cheapest firm power in german merit order bringing huge profits to the owners
According to Wikipedia, PreussenElektra was a subsidiary of VEBA, a state owned energy company. You have to cite your sources here because I don't want to have to rebut made-up stuff.
I do note that you have changed your argument from "plants were built mostly by private sector" to "it wasn't fully state controlled enterprises in the west". Closer to the truth, but still incorrect.
I stand corrected. VEBA was state owned at that time. On the other hand RWE was 50/50 private-municipality owned in the same period.
Still, no CFDs were given to them. So it's not about state reducing subsidies. Nor was it about environment regulations.
The high costs of recent western projects are more related to depleted supply chain and poor designs of the plants. We'll get a chance soon to observe how Canada and Korea will build in Europe. Both have much better supply chain and both want to build (Czechia- apr and Romania -candu). If both will have the same cost blows as flamanville then it's clearly related to EU itself. If not- then the problem was EDF incompetence specifically here and Westinghouse incompetence in US
Nuclear "became expensive" because state subsidies declined, labor costs increased, and environmental regulations across all industries tightened.