After a decade of negative interest, there is still a lot of excess capital looking for high-risk-high-gain investments. Perceived future economic value is unfortunately not in the stuff we know and understand to be useful, essential.

Use value != sales value; hype sells.

Ps. not too sure how far $17M gets you toward mini nuclear power plants, but I catch your drift.

Oklo’s Aurora was budgeted at around $10 million to build, with about $3 million/year to operate