The turnover of EDF in France in the 90" was above $40 billion. 60% of its production was from nuclear, hence the nuclear costed more than $24 billion each year just to be operated. For a country like France this is huge, several percent of the GDP of that time. But nobody was discussing about that issue mainly because the CGT union had a tight grip on EDF governance.
Yeah but not just that. We badly needed to develop the nuclear arsenal to stay relevant and having nuclear plants helped a lot with that, technically and politically. We can't really compete with numbers or gun power, so the bomb let us still have a word to say in big conflicts.
Now we can put the existing bombs in maintenance mode, or disassemble them into more modern ones, as we don't need that many. It's the right time to shift the energy source, because now it's all about energy again.
This is the only subject where terrorism actually helped. You can't nuke a bunch of suicide bombers or extremists hidden in a mountain. Hence you can't justify making Armageddon devices as easily as before.
