I think you misinterpret what I was saying. An actively cooled core needs lots of safety measures in place in order to make sure that the water pumps never fail, or if they do there are backup systems in place, and backup systems for those backup systems, etc. There's a physical cost to making all those mechanisms. Furthermore there is a regulatory and administrative cost to ensuring that those mechanisms would work across the entire industry.

On the other hand, something like the NuScale design takes an all-passive approach: it places a smaller fission core directly in a massive swimming pool that has enough water to passively cool the design all the way down. There are no moving parts to switch on in the case of failure. The way you handle a catastrophic failure is: you do nothing. It solves itself.

No moving-part safety mechanisms to install, just a big tank of water. No fallback mechanisms for those safety mechanisms, etc. Inspection is pretty easy: did the water level remain in range? Yes/no.

Cutting costs of safety inspections due to an inherently safer design doesn't mean a less-safe outcome.

For reactors built here a significant part of cost is plain mismanagement, corruption and/or profiteering. This results in costly and less-safe reactors.

Don't know about others.