If coal has been correctly accounted for in terms of human cost even outside of carbon, nuclear would have looked far better.

And what those numbers quote actually miss is that there was a period of massive over order of all kinds of plants, including coal that were canceled during 1970s economic problems. So the fact that people were over optimistic about the future in that period doesn't mean nuclear was bad. The economy simply didn't continue to boom as much as some people had predicted.

Even back then the inventiveness for US public utilities were structured in a way that makes it more viable to buy things that require continues fuel cost, rather then up front investment.

The simple fact is, externalizes include nuclear power would have dominated and would still do today. Short sighted politics and public fear is the reason it didn't happen.

Looking back at it, its actually a no brainer and countries like France who did it certainty didn't regret it. No massive pollution from coal plants with horrible environmental destruction around them, no dirty air, no mass destruction of country side because of coal mining. Far better energy independence.

> Alternating between "small and modular" and "big and efficient" to have something to try and hype with.

With molten salt or even just molten salt cooled reactors, you can be both small and efficient there is no conflict.

Had the US continued to invest in nuclear next generation reactors were well into development. However these were canceled. And very little private innovation took place from the on. Partly because it was incredibly hard to beat coal and later gas on cost and partly because regulation were hard coded to only be viable for PWR type reactors.