Unlike coal or nuclear, renewables are easily scaled down without creating a huge risk: for coal, you want to go large for efficiency reasons and to ensure that the right set of filters are installed and maintained. For nuclear, there were ideas of building a nuclear power plant in every basement, but given how the power plants we have look like military bases, that seems rather unfeasible.
Once you go big, you have the issues mentioned elsewhere in the thread (sunk cost fallacy, NIMBY, ...) but also corruption and that these big sites become single points of failure.
Dams are in the same space: NIMBY, once started you can't stop, large scale construction (which is rife with corruption).
Create financially reasonable basement/rooftop level nuclear or coal systems that can be safely installed by any random electrician and operated by the home owner and the entire discussion may shift.