The cost of the fuel is less than 0.1% of the cost of running a NPP. The cost of the fuel has almost nothing to do with the economics of nuclear power. And considering a liquid fueled reactor makes heat in the 900C range and a AP1400 makes heat in the 300C range, they aren't really substitutes for each other. The amount of incorrect information in this thread is truly shocking. For example, you can make synthetic fuel from a LFTR, you can't from a BWR or a PWR. That might be a valuable feature, don't you think.
> cost of the fuel has almost nothing to do with the economics of nuclear power
Who said this?
> considering a liquid fueled reactor makes heat in the 900C range and a AP1400 makes heat in the 300C range, they aren't really substitutes for each other
Nobody said this either.
There are more reactor designs in the world than LFTR, PWR and BWR, particularly if we're talking at the demonstration scale like this reactor.
Came online ~10 years ago. One could quibble about design and construction timelines; the reactor is still half-experimental, and the Russians are conducting that breeder program very slowly. But it's not a 1980s design frozen in time.