Are we talking public cost? Because that's all that matters. So far the public cost of nuclear power has been extraordinary, due to accidents and waste.

I understand that some of these startups aim to process existing waste in relatively small distributed reactors but what is the public cost of spreading a bunch of "mini" toxic waste sites around the world that remain hazardous for 100 years, instead of centrally storing it?

Plus I've read that although these mini reactors are not directly producing material that could be used in a dirty bomb, that they could be converted to do so if they fell into the wrong hands. I may be oversimplifying here, but the question again is what is the public risk of distributing atomic fuels and reactors in a manner that makes them much less secure? Would this make them more susceptible to "war hacking" and could this be the mini-reactor equivalent of a nuclear disaster?

Nuclear costs have always been about the long term public costs, not the short term $/kWh.

This is before we even consider the taxpayer cost that's gone into nuclear tech development. I wonder if there will be more public money needed to take this tech to market, even if the test reactors bear fruit.