That doesn't seem to describe the trajectory of the Carbon Free Power Project. It appears to have foundered due to economics, not the public "freaking out". The local small utilities, who presumably would be closer to the public, really tried to make it work, but without large utility interest it didn't hit subscriber targets.

Nuclear fans have a blindness to this situation, which occurs all the time with nuclear ideas. They get proposed, people run the numbers, and the project stalls. This appears to be happening with SMRs in Canada, for example.