At a conference in 2011, Simon Irish, an investment manager in New York, met an engineer with an innovative design for a nuclear reactor cooled by molten salt. If it worked, Irish figured, it could not only solve the problems with aging nuclear power, but also provide a realistic path to dropping fossil fuels. “The question was, ‘Can we do better than the conventional reactors that were commercialized 60 years ago?’” Irish recalled. “And the answer was, ‘Absolutely.’”
