Yeah but a self sustaining steam engine translates into mechanical force better/faster, and looks cooler, and doesnt irradiate the crap out of you when someone shoots the reactor, and is environmentally friendly, and has lots of shiny pipes, and can use steam pressure to fire harpoons, and is awesome, and is cheaper, and can propel you in a vacuum, and is retro, and is train-like, and im gonna stop now...
1. Possible.
2. Arguable.
3. Neither does a nuclear reactor that's being run properly. Unless you're really unlucky and someone screws up the containment on the short-half-life isotopes that never normally leave the reactor.
4. Nuclear power is, overall, probably the second-most environmentally friendly power source available in the 21st century. It beats fossil fuels for obvious reasons, doesn't screw with rivers, and doesn't take up nearly as much space per watt as solar or wind. Geothermal and maybe tidal power are better, but those have rather obviously-limited application.
5. So?
6. Not very well.
7. Not particularly.
8. Yes, but only because you're treating the core component--which is, I should add, unique--as being free.
9. Not very well.
10. So?
11. So?
I think the eternal steam engine when considered in a power plant scenario might be able to pump out more juice then its nuclear counterpart at the same scale, i mean steam engines dont need all the safety devices, decontamination rooms, computer consoles, radiation shielding or bigass concrete chimneys that are integral to safe operation and maintenance of a nuclear reactor of that magnitude.
True enough. Also, you don't need to worry about having critical mass. On the other hand, that won't help you if you can't use it.