Unfortunately, the history of private nuclear industry has been a horrid tale of sacrificing safety to maximize profit.
And in the US, the safety record of nuclear power is still better than every other industrialized country, except maybe France.
If we are going to return to nuclear energy, then not in the way safety has been turned over to the private sector in the last years.
Sure, we could go the government run route, and have a Hanford on every block. Or, just look what a mess it's been in the UK - aging plants (with no containment because the UK government says a nuke plant accident "isn't all that bad, really!") with numerous safety problems (which aren't all that bad, really!), being run with who knows what safety record (well, the partial meltdown at Chapelcross is semi-known, the fuel handing issues are pretty well known), with no real replacement record ("They're only 50 years old!") and no real public accountability.
Or, we could be like Canada, where the state run CANDU plants are worn out and in need of heavy overhaul....after 20 years of operation (look at Bruce-A). With who knows what happening along the way (it's known at least one "impossible" sudden pressure tube rupture happened over the years).
Or we could be like the Russians...
Like it or not, the simple fact is the US nuclear industry outperforms just about everyone else in terms of safety (Maybe the French beat us, but the French don't talk about nuclear accidents, so maybe they do, maybe they don't).
True, nuclear power's dangerous - EVERY form of electric generation is. But we lead the world in managing the risks - others countries come to US for the know-how. The PWR and BWR designs that dominate the world were both developed here, as was the containment, as was the idea of redundant safety systems, etc etc etc etc.
As far as breeders - I've read that lead-bismuth has been an idea the Russians have played with. The whole NAK thing is more because of the US DOE's hangup with sodium cooling than anything else (Shippingport ran as a breeder the last few years, and was a PWR).
I actually like the BWR, but it's hard to argue the PWR isn't a good design and mostly equal....
Nearly 50 years of commercial power generation in the US and there's been one major accident, two less major (Davis-Besse's top head corrosion issue, Brown's Ferry's fire), and a lot of annoying issues along the way (mostly because there were so many 'bleeding edge' plants built here). But no fatalities. Even Hydrolelectric can't say that. And let's not think of what could happen if a dam pops (and they do)