Nuclear makes sense. The fluid-fueled nuclear company he's the chairman of (Transatomic) is considered at least slightly heretical by the nuclear industry, which is used to its solid fuel water-cooled reactors. They also use used nuclear fuel (i.e. transuranics in nuclear waste) as fuel, which could be called heretical because recycling nuclear waste was once outlawed in the US by Jimmy Carter (but it no longer is illegal).

Trouble is that the amounts of money we're talking about don't go far in nuclear research.

I think $10M can go pretty far in basic feasibility studies needed for the Transatomic reactor. You need a bunch of diffusion couple experiments and hydride stability studies. Lots of furnaces, fume hoods, and surrogate fission products. But you're right that when you get to major component qualification then yeah, $10M is nothing.

I meant UPower, not Transatomic. Whoops!