Oh, I don't mean these merchant plants would be unregulated. It's just that if they were such great ideas, why aren't the power plant builders just going ahead and doing it themselves? According to the nuclear proponents, there's so much potential profit just going uncollected.
> why aren't the power plant builders just going ahead and doing it themselves?
Because they would still have to build the plants somewhere, and the legal environment in the US is such that anywhere you build your project will be snowed under by NIMBY Lawsuits and your investment will never pay back anything. So nobody wants to try.
Here's a timeline for what happened at Vogtle. No NIMBY lawsuits in there; plenty of screw ups and back and forth lawsuits among the participants though.
This looks like adding reactors to an already existing site. That kind of project won't have the same exposure to NIMBY lawsuits because the site is already there. The kind of project I had in mind was standing up a new site that had not previously had any reactors located there.
That said, I did not mean to imply that such lawsuits are the only issue that drives up costs for nuclear plants. From the article you reference it seems like various forms of government meddling in the process is a major factor, not to mention corporations being more interested in jockeying for position than getting a job done.
The answer is that companies have limited cash reserves and need external capital to do anything. Particularly when you are looking to build something hugely expensive that cannot generate revenue for years. The real "plant builder" is not the organisation with the technical expertise. It is the one that can pursuade banks and investors to take the risk.
I don't think you are disagreeing with parent. As you are explaining, "the market" thinks nuclear power plants to be too risky and too expensive compared to other power sources, which is exactly the reason why they shouldn't be build by public agencies anymore either.
