> If you can get the us federal government to be functional again or have a path to doing that
Impossible.
Federal government in US is failing along with the rest of large scale western style governments. They are too big, cost too much, and have too many fundamental structural deficiencies.
The model of having professional class of administrators and politicians running the country as part of a massive bureaucracy is one that can't work as it is unmanageable and full of conflicts of interests, moral hazards, political market failures and so on and so forth.
They carry on just through inertia at this point. Their one talent is creating a image of control and stability without actually providing any.
If you ever worked in a large publicly traded corporation and realized just how dysfunctional they are as a organization, multiply that a thousandfold and you have modern western governments.
Nuclear is expensive and doesn't work because there are a lot of people in power and next to power that don't want it to work.
> Federal government in US is failing along with the rest of large scale western style governments. They are too big, cost too much, and have too many fundamental structural deficiencies.
How do you see those governments failing, and when?
When sorting countries by tax burden (as a percentage of GDP), then you will find that there are tons of extremely livable countries at the top (wealthy European nations), while basically everything under ~10% GDP taxation is a 3rd world disaster.
How big of a GDP percentage would you propose can a government take at most and not "invariably fall apart"?
There are also a lot of people on the ground that don't want it to work, or will protest it, and that's where state power seems to work well to cut through opposition and just build things. Certainly a lot of tradeoffs are made to allow that but the Chinese government seems very good at building.
I'm not sure if it's the model or the particular culture working though - aren't there also a lot of party bureaucrats over there? So the core is authority or agency directed at the center of it, I think.
So get government out of the space here. Keep essential regulations for ensuring safety and so that insurance companies can cover liabilities. Let the free market play it out.
If the profit incentives are there(which there are as higher EROI = lowest cost per kWh), then it is a race to who can provide the product(energy) at the lowest cost more reliably.
Government unfortunately has a monopoly here as traditional reactors had proliferations concerns, needed much large capital, and political will. But if reactors can be modular and costs low that a city could afford it, then you can also have decentralized reactors just like you have with solar.
Like I said, if you have some pathway to a functional government (either to cut regulations sufficiently or to build it, I don't think either is much simpler) then you should get on that part first. But I'm not holding out much hope. We can barely reduce regulations to build houses, and voters like houses. You'll have environmental protests a plenty for city scale small reactors if they're in anyone's "backyard" at all