Realism from Rickover
The US Navy submarine nuclear reactors have been an amazingly successful design. But Admiral Rickover, speaking from that experience, told members of Congress in 1957: "Any plant you haven't built yet is always more efficient than the one you have built. This is obvious. They are all efficient when you haven't done anything on them, in the talking stage. Then they are all efficient, they are all cheap. They are all easy to build, and none have any problems.
https://wiseinternational.org/nuclear-monitor/872-873/small-modular-reactors-introduction-and-obituary
SMRs, like nuclear fusion and economic nuclear waste disposal, have been on the horizon ever since Rickover said that. It gets harder and harder as the decades pass, to believe that they will not always be just on that same horizon.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
