Republicans and many Democrats have high hopes for small nuclear reactors as an answer to climate change, but the nascent technology faces daunting regulatory and economic obstacles.

“I am not optimistic that any kind of nuclear reactors will have any significant impact on climate change for the next 20 or 30 years,” said Allison Macfarlane, a former chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission who is now a professor at George Washington University. “It’s really hard to make the economics of nuclear power work.”

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