Yes, however I suppose it is fuel for conspiracy theories.
My take is that these folks can't accept that nobody is actually driving. It terrifies them to realize that we are all aboard a rudderless ship, so they imagine these secret cabals to be able to sleep at night.
Take COVID. There is insufficient proof that it was the result of lab work, but many many people prefer that warm fuzzy thought over acknowledging that mutating is just what viruses do, and always have done. Knowing that we're all one unlucky mutation away from grisly death is just too much for some folks. "It can't happen again, we shutdown that lab!"
To those people it has to be a nice, neat conspiracy. That way someone is in control, and if we just put those few villains in their place everyone will be safe from viruses, economic instabilty, immigrants, and the boogey man forever.
You're telling me we don't have sci-fi energy harnessing capability to capture the nuclear energy itself and convert it to electricity?
It's 2025!
You have this insane device that produces a million degree hot ring of plasma and use it... to boil water...
Consider also how complex these reactors already are, it makes sense to use the simplest method that we know works well.
We start with detached electrons moving at high speeds (plasma). We want detached electrons moving at moderate speeds (electrical current). And yet, the intermediate steps involve everything from heat, steam, large-scale mechanical forces and magnetic induction, just to get back to the electrons?
It feels more like the "pull in a 500MB framework instead of writing the function yourself" kind of simplicity.
Essentially yes, but it's a function that has been continuously optimised by engineers for 200 years.