Research and development (‘R+D’) takes time to translate into mass deployment, and climate change is an urgent challenge. Some innovations may unlock a faster scaling-up of clean energy, but focusing R+D on technologies that are ready to demonstrate in the near term and can scale quickly may make more sense than putting lots of effort into longer-term R+D. Demonstration projects are especially important but hard to fund, because entities want to put large amounts of money into technologies that have not been physically proven at scale. 

One element of nuclear research, development, and demonstration would be to prove advanced reactor technologies. For example, reactor cores that use molten salt instead of water as the coolant would theoretically enable lower pressures (which are safer), higher temperatures (meaning increased efficiency), and produce easier-to-manage radioactive waste. Other novel reactor designs include gas-cooled and ‘fast’ nuclear reactors.  Another realm of nuclear R+D would involve ‘proving’ scaled-down small modular reactor’ designs that could enable mass-manufacturing of plants. Other innovations could include standardization, deploying plants on floating platforms, or using reactors to power shipping. All nuclear R+D could be accelerated by increasing funding from governments or investment funds.

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• Generation IV reactors (Wikipedia) 

• Advanced Small Modular Reactors (US Department of Energy)

• Nuclear Research (International Atomic Energy Agency)

You can write to your political representatives to encourage the support of R+D for 4th generation, modular reactors or other advanced nuclear technologies, though you may prefer to encourage the ramping up of research and development around more reliable, proven, and less ecologically controversial green tech.