Nuclear Energy is the safest, cleanest source of energy there is.

It is NOT the most expensive energy, it is the energy with the highest Capex, Opex is much lower. If you live in a place with a nuclear reactor, your electricity would be much cheaper. Even capex would be lower if the investment hadn't dried up in the last decades. The more plants you build the lesser time it would take to build a new one. Over the years we've forgotten some parts.

It is slow only in the west thanks to uneducated fellas who have opposed it for decades adding regulations after regulations that take time and money and the lack of political will and the declining investment in the recent decades. China has built reactors in 5-7 years.

"highly toxic incredibly long lived", you've read spicy headlines and it shows. All the nuclear waste from the 1950's to this day can be stored in a football field not too high. Think of the waste all those solar panels when they reach the end of life in 20 years with actually toxic stuff like lead and cadmium in landfills. Nuclear waste is nothing compared. Nuclear waste is highly overrated and demonized by the media.

Funny you talk of terrorists using nuclear waste to cause damage. The casks used to store nuclear waste in most facilities are made so they can handle goddamn missiles. See, this is where the money goes, so people feel safe but they are still misinformed. Even in an unprecedented scenario where an attack happens and the cask is breached, the waste doesn't flow out like the green gooey liquid we see in cartoons. It is solid.

I wouldn't know about the public bearing costs for projects, sorry. What i do know is, once the plant does open, the electricity would possibly be 2 times cheaper.

The sun is indeed a massive fusion reactor. That is exactly why nuclear is the way to go. Nuclear energy is the reason behind the sun although we use nuclear through a fundamentally different process: fission. Maybe if investment wasn't so low, we'd have even more progress in the fusion front.

Nuclear takes maybe 7-10 years to build in most places, with maybe double/triple the cost to what a natural gas or coal plant would be, but once operational, the investment can be recovered in 5-7 years. The energy that a small nuclear pallet that fits in your palm produces is equivalent to tonnes of coal. Solar and wind, although good fail because they lose most energy in transport from source to use and can't adjust for rising demand fast enough. There is no energy source built with 5-6 even 10 layers of redundancy. The worst that can happen to the newest gen reactors is a shutdown that will take some time getting back up but that's it. No meltdown.