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Generating power at a profit sans subsidies means that it produces energy at a price that society can reasonably pay and continue to support. If the power plant needs government subsidies to continue as a going concern then there's a decent chance that it isn't actually a net positive in terms of energy once you factor in maintenance, having to pay for nuclear scientists etc. The point of stressing profitability is to make sure that you don't have government money disguising what is actually a net energy loss (like encouraging farmers to burn oil growing corn, then turn the corn into a less efficient and less convenient fuel).
Money is not an energy unit, though. Aren't you the guy explaining how energy inefficient modern farming is? But it's perfectly profitable. I see no reason to assume lack of profits means energy inefficiency.
Obviously a financial system can be distorted, but I'm assuming a financial system that's somewhat accurate and not being gamed for the purpose of this exercise. The main reason profit matters here is that a power generation system should be able to support more economic activity than it requires to keep itself running. If you have a powerplant that produces 50 dollars worth of power after you feed it 100 dollars of raw inputs/labour, you're either going to be running it for some other reason (isotopes maybe) or not at all.
Generally I agree that energy efficiency would mean profits, this is why I mentioned that I doubt profitability will remain a problem, once the alternatives are exhausted. That said, it's not impossible that due to some market funkiness the two metrics will become uncorrelated. If it turns out you have to pay everyone in the nuclear industry at least a 7 figure salary, so they don't fuck off to do high-frequency trading, or something else that's short-term profitable, but ultimately pointless, I say bite the bullet, and subsidize their salaries. What you're addressing with that move is income distribution, not energy efficiency.
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