Vogtle is a jobs project, an odd, almost absurd artifact of the high costs. I have family members working on that site. The Summer units across the river were c

Vogtle is a jobs project, an odd, almost absurd artifact of the high costs. I have family members working on that site. The Summer units across the river were canceled. Vogtle barely survived. The loss of Vogtle would have caused too much unemployment in the region. I'd bet money the others are jobs projects, too, presuming they're still ongoing. But they'll be the last such nuclear jobs projects. I hope modular reactors work out. I just don't think they'll work out in the U.S. or most other democratic countries, not until they're so well established elsewhere that nuclear becomes boring again. Failure to appreciate this--to shift focus to applications and regions where they have a viable, near-term future--will only ensure the total death of nuclear. I had the same criticism for Rolls-Royce marketing piece last week about starting a modular reactor project in the U.K. I hope it works out, but Rolls-Royce claimed they were going to install the reactors in the U.K., which I believe is highly unlikely--certainly much more unlikely than if they attempted to first install them somewhere with less organized political opposition. My complaint is that popular science pieces such as this Wired article create the wrong expectations. Articles about modular reactors are formulaic and periodic, exactly like articles about flying cars many years ago.