And the much heavier regulatory environment exists for a bloody reason.
The US alone spent billions to clean up superfund sites on the taxpayers dime (because companies created a huge mess in pursuit of profit and unhampered by regulation in the 20th century).
Everything that exists for a reason; the question is whether the reason is good. We've spent decades being told that climate change is going to cost us percentages of GDP to avoid, and your first counterexample is the suggestion that mitigations might be in the billions for the US over the course of a century.
One of those numbers is bigger than the other; and it favours nuclear pretty decisively. The regulations set up an environment where business as usual appears to be worse than if actual unlikely nuclear catastrophe occurred, all the air pollution in the interim and the reduced access to cheap abundant energy are real problems that have real consequences.
Whoever accepted those reasons has blood on their hands, so well might they be called "bloody reasons". The consequences have been serious and terrible even before getting in to oil-related resource wars and the like.
