> The tax payer in Germany is picking up most of the... cleanup.

Indeed, because it's cleanup of political, not nuclear fallout.

Energy policy is Germany has always been a political issue. The government decides what gets done, who does it, how it is cleaned up, and who makes money from it. That can work, except it doesn't if politicians are fickle.

The fast breeder at Kalkar (SNR-300) had been planned and construction had started. Then the government changed (from CDU to SPD), the new government didn't like the idea of the reactor and added new ridiculous requirements, for example a cooling device for the ground under the reactor already in construction. You can probably guess how expensive it is to install anything under an existing building. In the end, the whole power plant was constructed, but never fuelled, and finally demolished. Now it serves as an example for how expensive nuclear power is---but really, the expense is all due to politics.

Decommissioning of the current light water reactor fleet is just the same thing. They got shut down prematurely because one particular reactor in Japan was flooded by a tsunami (and everybody knows Germany gets inundated by tsunamis all the time), which makes decommisioning relatively more expensive. It is obvious that the operators don't want to pick up the cost for this purely political decision. Given the political landscape right now, it's likely they aren't able to, either. In addition, the government promised to take care of the waste, but isn't actually doing it. (The original plan involved recycling in fast breeders, which isn't happening, thanks to politics.) Since there is no plan for the waste (thanks to politics) and the industry isn't allowed to come up with a plan themselves (thanks to politics), the expected cost for waste disposal is infinite. Decommisioning of the plants should have been funded by the operators. But the rules have been changed for no good reason. Effectively, everything has to be decontaminated to ridiculously low levels, and the workers doing it must not be exposed to anything. This is impossible, so it's infinitely expensive. Thanks not to technical difficulties or health concerns, but politics.

So yes, the needed money is stolen from everyone ("the tax payer picks it up"), but that's not the fault of the nuclear industry, it's the fault of incompetent, technically illiterate politicians.

> Sellafield cleanup

Military facility. (It was purely military when it was still called Windscale, and that's when it got contaminated.)

> New reactors in Europe are 2-3x over budget

Everything in Europe is over budget. Berlin Airport, Stuttgart central trainstation, Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg... Europe, but especially Germany, lost the ability to get anything done. Sad, but true. The Energiewende (German energy turnaround) is also over budget, and underdelivering.

> The chunk of Japan that's a no-go zone isn't that small.

If that chunk is a no-go zone, then so is Denver, Colorado. The customary limit of 1mSv/a is below natural background! And people live in areas that "badly contaminated" all over the world with no ill effects. Calling something that radiates that weakly a "no-go zone" is another political hatchet job.

> I'd rather spend the 200 billion... on energy storage

Go ahead. Do that and get rich by buying electricity when the sun shines and selling it when it doesn't. If you can do that, more power to you! The practical problem with that plan is---you can't. And if you could... well, you'd probably be buying nuclear electricity at night and selling it during the day.