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Mostly because they are built at such a low rate. If Canada were to send four rockets into space and use custom built Canadian ones, they would cost a fortune and be delayed for years. Spacex is cheap because spacex launches several times a month. The nuclear industry in the west is stuck between silly levels of regulation, such as the decades of fighting over how to store waste and a lack of an industrial base.
If we are actually going to get somewhere with nuclear, we need to build 10+ reactors a year in the west.
And they need to be of similar type, to get Nth of a kind benefits. As one person once put it, the problem with the US nuclear industry is that "In France, they have hundreds of types of cheese, but only two types of reactors. In America, this is reversed."
I'll recommend Where are my damn learning curves? as a look into that topic. (I'll also recommend the rest of that blog in general, even though it's not Motte-like in its focus)
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