It’s really not build costs alone that make nuclear expensive. Just as an example, you’re looking at roughly 500 employees per GW of capacity. Assuming they cost 100k/y including benefits that’s ~50 million per year or roughly 0.6c/kWh. Multiply that by * 50 years and your talking 2.5 billion over the plants lifetime just for the workers.

Ore is cheap, natural uranium is still cheap, enriched uranium isn’t, and making fuel rods isn’t. Insurance, land, replacement equipment, decommissioning, etc it all adds up.

People love to talk about how cheap various aspects of nuclear power are compared to other types of energy, but it’s the total costs that matter not just individual parts in isolation. Small modular reactors still need cooling, they still need turbines, workers, spent fuel cooling ponds and processing, security, etc etc.