The reactor would need to be replaced frequently as the chamber walls and molten-lithium pipes weaken from neutron bombardment, every two years, maybe as long a

The reactor would need to be replaced frequently as the chamber walls and molten-lithium pipes weaken from neutron bombardment, every two years, maybe as long as five. By the time they could build one, there might be some way to make it last ten? It needs even bigger containment than a regular nuke because reactive molten lithium bursts into flame on contact with air. The oxidized product is an exploding cloud of vaporized radioactive drain cleaner. A thousand tons of lithium make a lot of drain cleaner. And again, by that time all our power will be cheaply supplied by renewables with no disastrous failure modes, and maintained just by taking bits down and putting up new bits, in shirtsleeves when weather favors it.