So massive overuns in time and money are due to FUD? Does the explain design flaws? Politicians are used to taking flack for infrastructure projects, that is hardly unique to nuclear. But funding the next generation of reactor is hugely expensive and risky regardless of public perceptions.
Partially, yes. The reactors currently under construction are third generation, as opposed to tested, proved and wildly successful second generation plants (plus tweaks and updates). There are of course many good (and even more really bad) reasons to prefer a new and unproven design over a slightly older proven one, and few of them unique to nuclear projects -- but massive unwarranted fear (including conflation with nuclear weapons) has been the defining narrative of nuclear between 30-40 years ago when we were perfectly capable of building nuclear projects and today.
So why did they choose to not use proven designs? Honestly I don't have a problem using riskier designs if it could reduce costs. And increased complexity is a risk in itself.
It's difficult to say, but it's likely to be a factor that an official expressing a risk tolerance >0.00 would have a very short and unglamorous career ahead of him in the hostile climate surrounding anything nuclear, despite us casually accepting much, much higher risks in all sorts of areas.
