But cheaper than nukes.
No not even that.
The concept is "marginal rate of return" - basically, every dollar spent on nukes that could have been spent on various efficiency improvements and so forth is fifty cents less energy demand met. Make the high-payoff conservation investments first, the cheaper power investments second, and nukes if you have a few hundred billion left over.
Again these are not competitive avenues: power plants are being decommissions and need to be replaced, sure efficiency can reduced the number of new plants needed but we are always going to need new powerplants.
We can't even get socialist medicine in this country - socializing the entire electrical power system would require a new Congress.
We don't need to "socials" the grid, just upgrade it.