There's a new book out, reviewed recently by the New York Times, that wants to change that perception. "A Bright Future: How Some Countries Have Solved Climate Change and the Rest Can Follow" [1] is co-written by an engineer who lays out the case for nuclear power. The authors think that rapid deployment of nuclear power is the only way to avoid a climate catastrophe.
1) We can (and should!) build multiple plants in parallel. The sooner we start the better.
2) Countries like South Korea manage to build nuclear plants in around 4 years or so. The secret is that they have standardized on a design, and are building it again and again. There is hope that SMR's will make it easier to produce plants on time and budget, but those are still some years off.
3) Compare how the carbon emissions from electricity production in Germany has changed since they started their "Energiewende" project where they are phasing out nuclear and are deploying a lot of solar and wind. For comparison, look at e.g. the nuclear buildout in France (mostly from the late 1970'ies to the early 1990'ies).
If that is actually true, then we should just hire the South Koreans to build some power plants for us. If that experiment actually produces safe functioning USA-located power plants within budgeted costs, then we can worry about Americans learning to build similar plants.
Barakah 1, built in the UAE by South Korea, was originally supposed to take 5 years, operating in 2017. It has been delayed a couple of times. Bad news from December 2018:
"Cracks found in containment building of UAE nuclear power plant built by S. Korean companies"
It may still start in 2019. We'll see. But we're already at nearly 7 years.
Also, "countries like South Korea" is a club consisting of South Korea and nobody else. Other countries touted for their continued embrace of nuclear power, like Russia, China, and France, don't build reactors that quickly. If you want information right from the source, use the IAEA's Power Reactor Information System and look at the time between construction start and first grid connection for commercially operating reactors.
Their newest commercially operating reactor Civaux 2 took 8 years between construction start and grid connection. They have another, Flamanville 3, that will be newer when/if completed, but it has been under construction for 11 years.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/05/books/review/bright-futur...