I am all for further study in all areas of nuclear energy.
The one described in the article as being liquid sodium cooled is interesting to me. While studying nuclear power in college my class took a field trip to the Detroit Edison Enrico Fermi reactor. At the time it was shut down for "repairs". The core (before they got close to full power) overheated and was shut down. As it turned out, an undocumented modification had been made to the base of the core. The metal baffle that had been added, supposedly to more evenly distribute the coolant entering the core broke loose and blocked a number of tubes.
When we were there they had completed the repairs to the core and were beginning the refueling. As I recall they never got it to full power after the restart and it was again shut down and subsequently decommissioned.
The point of me saying that is to convey my support of further nuclear power---but be fully respectful of our failures and the need to avoid another. Just for the record, three years after graduation I worked on Three Mile Island Unit II---Unit one is the one that had the melt down.
The long term goal has to be fusion.
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty” ---Sir Winston Churchill
"Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all." ---John W. Gardner
“You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” ---C. S. Lewis