And thus we arrive at today's world, where the best and brightest of our generation are working on optimizing ad clicks instead of solving grand challenges. le sigh

Austria comes to mind - they built the fully functional nuclear power plant, and never had it started - because the public referendum was narrowly (50.47%) against it. Billions of dollars down the drain, hundreds of careers derailed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwentendorf_Nuclear_Power_Plan...

> It's impossible to make binding long-term promises in a democracy. Voters are allowed to change their minds, and the risk that they do that and completely destroy nuclear engineering as a career option is always present.

That's true of any political system, the problem with democracy is more that it's invariably fickle. A dictator may also be fickle, but there's a least a chance he has a long term vision with a late payoff that he pursues for a his lifetime.

But somebody has to maintain all those nuclear missiles and nuclear subs.

What's the percentage split for civilian vs military employment for nuclear industry jobs?

> It's impossible to make binding long-term promises in a democracy.

We can make binding financial promises at least. It's entirely possible to grant nuclear workers each a personal 60 year annuity managed by a consortium of foreign banks, and requiring the worker to pick between working as an engineer, returning the annuity, or sitting in prison.

This, it really is just a question of political will and cost.