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It's not enough to count the problems in the list, you also weigh the ones it solves against those it introduces. I'm not a nuclear engineer, but none of the issues seem insurmountable, and some are addressed in modern designs. I see a few big advantages: 1) Apparently much lower resource requirements for construction, maintenance, and mining/refining the fuel, than for traditional nuclear power, and also (!) the wind and solar equivalent. We don't have the metals, as far as we know, to maintain a fleet of wind turbines, solar panels, and batteries for very long without an almost perfect recycling rate. 2) Some designs can consume spent nuclear fuel. This is a more cost-effective (and more sane) option for disposing nuclear waste than burying it. 3) Steady availability. Wind and solar are unreliable, so you need a buffer, which means batteries (or pumped hydro, or rapidly spinning hunks of metal, or something). Mass production is a force to be reckoned with, and the cost of wind and solar has fallen relative to other power sources, but given the dominance (still) of combustion, this not only reflects economies of scale in manufacturing wind/solar equipment, which I don't by any means deny, but it reflects also the rising costs of of legacy fuels. It is not getting easier to find coal, oil, or many of the metals we use to manufacture energy systems and the material economies they sustain. It seems to me we need an energy system that can function reliably in a world facing resource shortages and other stressors, and in this context smaller scale, modular power plants may even be an advantage. I know TMSR-LF1 is small and a research program; I thought it had sold some power, but might have been misinformed |