Nuclear is more smoke and mirrors, another high tech way of boiling water to create steam and drive turbines. In other words it’s still just archaic steam power.

Of course we still use water as the medium because it’s abundant, safe and cheap. But water also has an incredibly high heat capacity and requires more jules-per-kg to boil to 100C than any other room temperature liquid.

It’s theoretically possible to use room temperature liquids such as Mercury or Bromine as the medium but as you might imagine the safety issues exponentially multiply.

New Jersey once had a Mercury power plant!