They don't materially affect the cost of a nuclear power plant. Cooling towers or evaporating ponds are not expensive. Coal and gas power plants also use them.

You just can't easily retrofit them onto an _existing_ power plant.

If they were essentially free all plants would be built with them. Evidently they are not free.

> If they were essentially free all plants would be built with them.

Pretty much all the new thermal power plants are (including biomass-burning plants), except in places where cool water is not scarce.

It's weird to glomp onto that idea, as if it's some kind of a fatal flaw of nuclear power.

At least these installations don't need to deal with radioactive material directly, so they will have the same financial infact as similar improvements to, say, coal-fired power plants.