[badloginagain]

When nuclear research was first being developed, it was for the specific purpose of building the bomb. When the war ended, and the industry switched to civilian applications, they decided to go with Uranium because they had already worked out many of the issues.

Still, the US Airforce wanted a nuclear-powered bomber shortly after the Navy showed their nuclear sub and before ICBM's deprecated "end-of-days" long-range bombers. A water-contained reactor wouldn't work in an airplane, so they funded the development of the MSR (molten-salt-reactor).

Unfortunately, when they shuddered the project after the implementation of practical ICBMs, industry politics discredited MSR's in favour of the reactor-types we have now.

After fukushima, a grassroots campaign has been undertaken to resume research of MSR's as a replacement of fossil fuels for scalable carbon-free energy creation. If you are interested, you can get a great overview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4

[r00fus]

> Unfortunately, when they shuddered the project after the implementation of practical ICBMs, industry politics discredited MSR's in favour of the reactor-types we have now.

So essentially what you're seeing is the result of decades of regulatory capture of the NRC by the nuclear industry.

[angersock]

I think the missing factor is that there are massive regulatory hurdles in the way of testing new designs, no?

[fennecfoxen]

... well, yeah: placing massive hurdles in the way of potential competitors and their technologies is about half of the premise of regulatory capture...

[agumonkey]

It's amazing how the state of things may look like a local maximum depending on the root of the research path.