It's only "cheap" as long as you can outsource the long-term costs, like for waste storage or in the case of a disaster.
As is, these plants are barely profitable, imagine they'd be forced to set funds aside for clean-up operations in case something goes really wrong, talking about real funds here that would make an actual difference and not some token amount. They don't do that because they know it would totally ruin their bottom line but by any metric they should be doing exactly that because it would be their mess that needs to be cleaned up when something goes wrong.
These costs are very real and in the case of catastrophic failure can be so high that even major economies are struggling to pay them (like Japan has been).
And it's not like we have any good ways to hold anybody responsible when something actually goes wrong.
The responsible company can just declare bankruptcy and have somebody else deal with the costs and long-term ramifications of the clean-up efforts aka the tax payer.
As is, these plants are barely profitable, imagine they'd be forced to set funds aside for clean-up operations in case something goes really wrong, talking about real funds here that would make an actual difference and not some token amount. They don't do that because they know it would totally ruin their bottom line but by any metric they should be doing exactly that because it would be their mess that needs to be cleaned up when something goes wrong.
These costs are very real and in the case of catastrophic failure can be so high that even major economies are struggling to pay them (like Japan has been).
And it's not like we have any good ways to hold anybody responsible when something actually goes wrong. The responsible company can just declare bankruptcy and have somebody else deal with the costs and long-term ramifications of the clean-up efforts aka the tax payer.