Two things could remove much of the expense and increase safety:

1- remove lawsuits and NIMBYism to overcome. That's where a lot of the cost and delay comes from when building these, so if millions didn't have to be spent on lawsuits just to get the goahead to begin construction it'd cut the cost massively.

2- remove profit from the equation. Without profit motive, the incentives that encourage discarding safety in favor of profit go way down.