I completely agree - but let's call it scientific research not startups. Startups are about industrialising existing working processes. What we are missing he

I completely agree - but let's call it scientific research not startups. Startups are about industrialising existing working processes. What we are missing here is the multiple different funded experiments that take the different combinations of salts, heat exchangers and so on and come up with "hey this one works best" - make these. Funding these experiments through VC is just asking for bias and PR not empirical results. In short, if the government was running 100+ experimental reactors, this press release would be "whoops, 99 to go" and not even create a stir. It's only because there is 100M at stake is anyone fighting back.