[fennecfoxen]

All the modern design proposals are to mass-produce smaller units -- sometimes, completely sealed units -- which would then be installed several to a site, and maybe sent back to the manufacturer to be refurbished at periodic intervals. This is the "save money by mass production" economies-of-scale approach, as opposed to "save money by being more efficient with large custom-built plants" economies-of-scale approach which has failed the industry and led to many of those ballooning costs.

(Whether we have the regulatory wherewithal to go with that plan is another matter, but the very idea of reusing the same design over and over does help keep compliance costs down, and you can focus on site-selection costs.)