Re: Build SMRs instead
It's been calculated that current SMR designs produce considerably more nuclear waste per watt generated than conventional ones. As with those the public will end up having to pay for the clean-up when the company making the reactors dissolves itself over the costs after taking the government subsidies & customers' money and giving it to the upper management and shareholders.
No historical, current or proposed uranium or plutonium fission reactor has ever made or will make a profit once state subsidy, decommissioning and long term waste storage are factored in to the costs. Building new ones will not help the current climate problem because they won't come online in time and by the time they do, they'll be providing some of the most expensive power on the grid.
Nuclear fusion and nuclear fission, perhaps using thorium reactions, may be worth pursuing but it's just a distraction to suggest they can help with the pickle into which we've currently gotten ourselves.
If we are going to state-subsidise the energy industry, we should be removing all the breaks the fossil fuel companies are still getting, take that and all public money currently being spent on new fission build and fusion research and invest that in both the installation of existing renewable capture and storage facilities and research into improving them. This would be faster gain and much lower risk.