Agreed but the emotional hurdle is huge. A 50 - 100MW travelling wave reactor (TWR) to provide baseline for a city would be straight forward bury the reactor, set up what is essentially a geothermal plant on top of it, safe, clean, and it disposes left over waste!

Completely technologically sound, safer than any other power alternative, and impossible to fund, license, and deploy due to primarily emotional fear of the words 'nuclear reactor'.

Yeah, so perhaps overcoming the PR challenge is an area that needs more research. Personally, I would welcome a modern nuclear reactor in my backyard.

You really think it's NIMBY concerns that's stopping China deploying these?

China is already deploying nuclear reactors, while their population may be emotionally afraid of them, they have a system whereby they can deploy by fiat. That isn't true in the US and much of Europe.

[1] "Over 60 power reactors are currently being constructed in 13 countries plus Taiwan (see Table below), notably China, South Korea, UAE and Russia." -- http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/current-and-future-generat...

And how many of those are the travelling wave reactors that you think could be rolled out today if tree-huggers weren't preventing it? The answer is zero I believe which means it's likely not the environmentalists that are holding things up but more likely fundamental issues with the technology not being ready yet.

It seems China is at the very, very early stages of thinking about maybe investigating building one of these.