Given the enormous cost and that any project started today won’t supply any power for 20 years no commercial company is ever going to invest in it.
It also seems to me that if there were sufficient political willpower that improvements could be made here. It’s a bit like how anti-solar folks complain about the massive cost while ignoring that it is possible to improve costs.
1: http://euanmearns.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-nucle...
that's 11000 potential pairs per year x 10 years = 110000 pairs = 2200000 MW = 2200 GW. total US usage is 4 trillion kWh for 2022 [4], which is 456 GW averaged over the whole year.
so in the 10 years that it takes to build 85% of nuclear reactors, the oil/gas industry could drill enough geothermal wells to satisfy 4x the electricity requirements of the entire US.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/965763/number-of-oil-and...
[2] https://fervoenergy.com/fervo-energy-breaks-ground-on-the-wo...
[3] presentation in Denver May 2024 by fervo completion engineer said 40 total wells
[4] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/use-of-elect...
Even getting a finished reactor in the west is a good project. Most have either been cancelled or never progressed past the investment decision.
Through all of nuclear powers history we have seen negative learning.
The costs of the French nuclear scale-up: A case of negative learning by doing
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...
The following video puts nuclear electricity prices up at just under 100 USD/MWh for those who must have power.