Nuclear has never managed to be cheap. The really big nuclear buildouts always had a national security subsidy: either for energy security (France), or for nuclear weapons (US, UK, USSR, China, and also France). This is partly why non-weaponizable reactor designs never became popular either.

> They obviously don't like that, which is why they keep pushing for hydrogen to keep people dependent.

This isn't quite it. Energy production is always going to be dominated by capital owners because it's a capital-intensive business. Doubly so for renewables. No, the real reason fossil fuel companies keep pushing for hydrogen is so they can sell hydrogen produced from natural gas as "green", after they've dumped the inconvenient carbon atoms into the atmosphere.

The medium term real, important uses for renewable hydrogen are (1) Haber process (3H2 + N2 -> 2HN3) and (2) steel production by reducing (removing oxygen from) raw iron ores.

Edit: btw, I think the underlying paper is https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cey2.411

So if the efficiency of generating hydrogen is increased, that's a win for endusers no matter if they do it themselves or pump it somewhere from 3rd party.

You are correct about the subscription model though.

Once GPU production is fully ramped up, I would expect AI to become energy bound. Can we install enough renewable energy and nuclear power plants to fulfill the demand to the point that energy will be ridiculously cheap?

But it was never, and will never be "cheap".

Also not all places might be suitable for nuclear, for various reasons. Hydrogen might be a good option.

In reality, people are spreading a conspiracy theory to mentally distract from this fact. They do not want to admit that they have been fooled by battery makers, so they create a narrative that the alternative is somehow an ever bigger scam.