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I actually think Kirk has a point here. The Gen IV reactors are great and fine, and what they lack is not really funding but reactors. There has been numerous funding events for decades, which has been almost entirely consumed by people not building things.
ETA: This is not a problem limited to nuclear power development. There is a serious, IMO possibly terminal problem of construction sclerosis in this country such that we can't build reactors, railroads, transmission lines, or nearly any other major engineering project that isn't a freeway, except at increasingly impossible high costs and timelines.
Too many veto points. NEPA was the original sin (thanks Dick), community review, greenhouse gas review, endangered species act review, ADA review, millions of industry-specific regulations, and lawsuits associated with each one. It's a Gordian knot, the Democrats like it (and can bypass it whenever they want something) and the Republicans are temperamentally against cutting.
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Thanks, that's exactly what I mean. In twenty years the same people will be getting grants to talk about the generation 5 reactors they're not going to build.
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