Comment by benreesman

Nuclear energy was at inception and remains today wildly regulated, in generally (outside of military contexts) a very transparent way, and the brakes get slammed on over even minor incidents.

It’s also of obvious as opposed to conjectural utility: we know exactly how we price electricity. There’s no way to know how useful a 10x large model will be, we’re debating the utility of the ones that do exist, the debate about the ones that don’t is on a very slender limb.

Combine that with a political and regulatory climate that seems to have a neon sign on top, “LAWS4CA$H” and helm the thing mostly with people who, uh, lean authoritarian, and the remaining similarities to useful public projects like nuclear seems to reduce to “really expensive, technically complicated, and seems kinda dangerous”.