It does not necessarily take nuclear power plants that long to make. Japan built theirs in less than 5 years and France built the majority of their plants needing only 5-8 years per plant.
That's only the construction time though, in addition comes design, planning and regulatory processes.
And no one except a single plant in Finland have actually solved the issue of safely storing nuclear waste for hundreds of thousands of years, let alone just storing them safely against the natural disasters and wars that are likely to occur within decades or centuries.
But even France is having trouble building new plants now, so it seems to build these power plants to the level of safety that people talk about when they say how safe nuclear is, requires a long time and a lot of money.
It does not necessarily take nuclear power plants that long to make. Japan built theirs in less than 5 years and France built the majority of their plants needing only 5-8 years per plant.
That's only the construction time though, in addition comes design, planning and regulatory processes. And no one except a single plant in Finland have actually solved the issue of safely storing nuclear waste for hundreds of thousands of years, let alone just storing them safely against the natural disasters and wars that are likely to occur within decades or centuries.
But even France is having trouble building new plants now, so it seems to build these power plants to the level of safety that people talk about when they say how safe nuclear is, requires a long time and a lot of money.