Yes, but also literally every industry starts that way. Start small and scale up. Nuclear’s special because we did it once and then almost completely stopped building them globally for so long that the capability faded away.
The tech shifted in the meantime, so even the knowledge that was preserved is for designs we wouldn’t want to build today.
It’s a weird situation.
Yes, especially right now. To be fair that’s mostly because solar is doing great as far as scale goes right now. Nuclear has near zero scale and lost all experience, so it’s more expensive than ever.