I'd really like to see the newer designs built out at least somewhere, but I have a feeling that there is more to it than what I've read in the pop-sci articles.
Excerpts:
* Nuclear power capacity worldwide is increasing steadily, with about 50 reactors under construction.
* Most reactors on order or planned are in the Asian region, though there are major plans for new units in Russia.
* Significant further capacity is being created by plant upgrading.
* Plant lifetime extension programmes are maintaining capacity, particularly in the USA.
About 50 power reactors are currently being constructed in 13 countries (see table below), notably China, India, UAE and Russia.
Also, see World Nuclear Performance Report 2018 http://www.world-nuclear.org/our-association/publications/on...
The decommissioning of nuclear reactors is far outpacing the construction of new plants.
https://www.reuters.com/article/energy-nuclearpower/nuclear-...
The report: https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/-2018-.html
But China is the real leader. They're aggressively developing every major GenIV category, including two government-funded molten salt reactors. Terrapower moved their traveling wave reactor to China after giving up on the U.S.
Yet they still have a strong regulatory burden, but the difference with the US is that they have a vested interest in not hampering nuclear tech, whereas here nuclear tech is not high on national priorities. I guess it's another case of #followTheMoney :)
They pushed foreword on that technology but never truly innovated on an industrial scale by having new types of reactors deployed in large numbers.
Its basically a large state industry that is very, very heavy footed.
Among major nuclear powers, China is advancing fast on safer and smaller Gen IV reactors, specially the Thorium based Molten Salt Reactor (TMSR). They built and validated the design will commit a huge amount of funding to improvement and build-outs.[1]
[1] https://neutronbytes.com/2018/01/07/recent-developments-in-a...
Here is a HN discussion a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17813614
But in terms of regulatory and commercial, and integration of government and markets they didn't do much better.
The reality is that in the west power was a matter of state control much of the time, and with nuclear being such a politically decisive policy it was really difficult ever get into a better situation.
China and India are working on new designs. India is kind of slow but they are jugging along. China is doing much better and they are gone be the major builder of nuclear power in the future.
Many companies move to China, for example Bill Gates company.
However in terms of the west, Canada has had the balls to go its own way with the CANDU reactors and now because that program has been privatized and not much further development is gone happen, they have turned to SMR and to improve the regulatory environment.
This means that there are now above 10 nuclear companies trying to build GenIV reactors in Canada. The one leading, because they have cleared the first regulatory hurdle, is Terrestrial Energy a molten salt reactor.
One of the create successes of anti-nuclear moment. Its band in a very destructive way where the minster is not even allowed to start a concept plan or anything like it.