"At present, atomic power presents an exceptionally costly and inconvenient means of obtaining energy which can be extracted much more economically from conventional fuels.… This is expensive power, not cheap power as the public has been led to believe." — C. G. Suits, Director of Research, General Electric, who was operating the Hanford reactors, 1951.
The C.G suits were right as long as the digging operation is not too costly (the more shallow and concentrated the better)
Fossil fuels are nothing short of a miracle because they are so energy dense, but it's a slow poison and has high addictive power.
As long as we didn't (want to) know about negative externalities (chief among them CO2 and CH4) whose cost was borne by humanity, it was ok. Dirty but everyone seemed to think it was worth it.
The advantages of nuclear is not that it would be too cheap to meter (even though that becomes true with time because most of the price is upfront investment).
- It is that you can get energy independence even if you don't have uranium because it is so energy dense that you can just stockpile it. For example France could run its plants for 2 years with its current stockpile of uranium, and it only recycles around 10% of its fuel. Compare that with its oil needs, the oil stockpile would only last 3 months, probably less.
- It is CO2 free
Bonus: Nuclear industry is required to take of its waste products (which are only waste products insofar are we are too lazy/cheap to recycle them, else they are just more fuel)
Safe, clean, too cheap to meter?
Some things never change.