I don’t think the technicals even matter.

What matters now is:

• Popular public perception.

• Incentives for decision makers.

• And lobbying funds to sway both.

And this makes it tricky:

• Fission looks bad to a layman. It’s scary, and failures and the waste feel dangerous no matter what the reality is. It’s a perfect fit for social media clickbait too.

• New fission plants are a long term investment. They’re expensive, up front. In other words, they don’t yield any political points before a governor’s or mayor’s or or CEO’s term ends, basically, while even renewables like solar or wind are faster to set up.

• There is a sizable nuclear lobby. This is a plus. But Oil will crush it like a bug if it gets “too big” and appreciably threatens petro power.

So as much as I love it, I thinks the best we can hope for in most regions is “recommissioning old plants.”

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And to be clear, fusion is a completely different category to me.

I think it’s a waste of precious funds, and is “hopium” for the public. It’s theoretically interesting, but even with a breakthrough, in best-case scenarios, it’s still gonna be expensive to maintain and have many drawbacks. Some are even worse than fission (like more extreme neutron radiation irradiating and eroding components, and stupendously high up-front costs).

I think the funds would be better allocated towards maser drilling for geothermal and cheaper solar cells. And these would yield quicker political points, too, like coal/gas plants quickly converted to geothermal, or mass produced, cheap “backyard solar” the average person can buy and make money with.