There’s a few things (I am an engineer, though not nuclear):
Efficiencies don’t necessarily stack like that. For boiling water you’re dependent on kinetic energy as heat. I’m not familiar with running plasma through magnetic fields for power generation, but if you lose thermal energy, your overall efficiency may be worse.
In power generation, reliability is obviously extremely important, and the nuclear industry is highly risk-averse. So doing something in a known, tested way is preferable. Any downtime is extremely expensive if things break, since it may be gigawatts of power you’re not selling.
Big magnets and handling highly energetic plasma are both really expensive. Steam turbines and generators have existing supply chains since we use them everywhere. I think cost is a big part, since the people building power plants want to make their money back sooner, so may not want to pay millions to billions more for a few percent efficiency gain.
There’s a few things (I am an engineer, though not nuclear):
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