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I know nothing about this but just did a little reading. It seems some direct nuclear to electricity methods are 90% efficient.

https://www.quora.com/Is-it-possible-to-convert-nuclear-ener...

PIDEC sounds like it works well with conventional IV gen reactors, achieving an extra 40% efficiency. ICC (a kind of DEC) seems suited to fusion and can exceed 90% efficiency.

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I suspect the problem is that we've been building steam engines for a very long time, and have become very good at it. We'd be starting at zero, from an engineering standpoint, for PIDEC and ICC. It's a worthwhile task, but it would be billions laid down for something that has never been done at scale before (read: the government would have to fund the experimental reactor).

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