Should Nuclear Plants be Owned by the State?

Jerome a Paris has published the same post at several locations making a case that nuclear plants should be financed and owned by the government:

As we see news of the possible (and increasingly likely) bailout of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae by the US Treasury, I am reminded of something that I have been writing about nuclear energy, ie that it should be financed by the State, and I'd like to extend on why I think there are fascinating similarities between the two topics, however distinct they may seem.

My point about nuclear is that it is a capital intensive form of power generation, ie that the main component of the cost of the electricity produced is the long term amortisation (or financing) of the upfront investment. That means that the single most important driver of the cost of nuclear energy is the interest rate applied. In turn, that suggests that the easiest way to lower the cost of nuclear energy is to give it access to State funding, given how the State will always be the entity that has access to the lowest borrowing.

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We need to make government able to do its job, which means using both the stick and the carrot. If you want cheap mortgages (a worthy goal of public policy), regulate the hell out of banks, and nationalize Freddie and Fannie; if you want cheap electricity, allow public funding of power plants (which, btw, will also heavily favor wind and other renewable energies) and make sure that all forms of generation are fully regulated for their externalities. ...

Be sure to check out the rest. What are my thoughts? I think governments should have as little a role as possible in the markets. Some of my reasoning for this includes the fact that: governments are inefficient, competition is gone (which helps reduce prices) and politics are always changing (which does not provide consistency if we want to have some sort of long-term energy policy). Critics to my reasonings point out that private companies "screw the customers and enrich the greedy." So what do you think? Can the government do a better job with nuclear energy than private companies?