If reactors were ten times cheaper but no safer, we'd be building them like hotcakes.
The western world has made development of new fission plants practically impossible. Requiring 100s of millions in development before you might get a hint if the government would actually allow you to build a plant.
Thankfully this has finally started to change. Mostly in Canada and that's where we will likely see next generation fission first.
What has also prevented changes from happening is that nuclear scales down poorly, so the cost of iterating designs is so large. Making a new kind of PV cell or module, or wind turbine, is comparatively much cheaper, because these are individually much smaller and cheaper. The replicated nature of these sources is an advantage in so many ways.
