Nukes ARE a lot more profitable than coal, because a lot less people are involved. Labor costs are lower, especially when you figure all those guys looking for and digging up hydrocarbons. Also, the government offered tech support, public relations, research, unclassified equipment, training, and the regulation needed to reassure the public. They also provided liability insurance (because no insurance company would touch it) and they offered to process the waste, because the industry knew that if that cost was added in, the profits shrank considerably. But the government welshed on that offer. Still, that didn't stop the industry from creating more. After all, the government subsidized the airline industry and the trucking industry (Interstate Highway System).

The greed came in because as long as the industry could get somebody else to sign off on the waste, they made no effort to do anything about it themselves. Industry would build and run the plants, buy the Uranium, and sell the power. Period. That's like buying a car, paying for gas, and not worrying about maintenance, insurance, parking, tolls, licenses and fees, and so on. The rest of the infrastructure required to support the industry never materialized, and cheap oil from the Middle East made it not worth following up.

The Eisenhower administration had it all planned out, even the long term development of the fuel cycle, breeder reactors for when the Uranium ran out. Look it up, Atoms for Peace. It was all abandoned because except for the actual selling of electricity, the rest of the technology was just not profitable.

Tom, can't you see the scale of this tragedy? This isn't just an engineering problem, a newfangled way to make steam for your turbines.
Its a society-changing restructuring that requires long-term planning and coordination, government and business working together, and politcal and public involvement and support. That's what Eisenhower had in mind in the fifties, and it was a wonderful idea. But it couldn't get past the quick buck artists in the boardrooms.

I came in just as this all started to unravel, when the industry was moving into cover-up and damage control, public relations and marketing. Damn straight I'm cynical.