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> When has that ever stopped the march of technology?

Fission reactors. Human cloning. Nuremberg code for medical ethics in general.

When has that ever stopped the march of technology beside fission reactors, human cloning and through the Nuremberg code for medical ethics in general?

I guess "What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?" [1] never gets old.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc7HmhrgTuQ

surely there are some countries on earth where fission reactors could be developed without government interference if that was all it took.

Don't we have them already?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressurized_water_reactor

> PWRs constitute the large majority of the world's nuclear power plants (with notable exceptions being the UK, Japan and Canada). In a PWR, the primary coolant (water) is pumped under high pressure to the reactor core where it is heated by the energy released by the fission of atoms.

When people say "fission reactor" do they mean something else?

no, fission reactor is any nuclear reactor where atoms become more, smaller atoms (fusion reactors are the opposite of that). There's plenty of fission reactors, most of them built with heavy government support.

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