The US lost the lead in the nuclear race decades ago. We’ve been frozen in judicial Hell for so long that even China has better, more modern nuclear power reactors.
At this point, I’d be thrilled in the US just licensed and built 1,000 CANDU-NG reactors. We’d be all set for power for the next 100 years.
CANDU reactors have huge capital costs due to the hundreds of tons of heavy water needed to run one. At $300 a kg it’s a hundred million or more in D2O up front at the turn key cost for a CANDU. Graphene shows real promise to slash that cost.
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15215
CANDU reactors can also burn down to uranium per levels the remaining fuel in spent LWR “waste” no reprocessing needed the Koreans are going to use the DUPIC cycle burning LWR waste in their CANDUs it more than doubles the energy per ton of fuel and the waste is not usable at all fire weapons at that point as all of the U235 is gone along with 98% of the PU239 it’s win win.