There's something that feels so archaic about using a nuclear reactor to... boil water and spin a turbine. It's disappointing that we haven't figured out a better way to convert to electrical energy than what we were using in the 1800s.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_generator#Effic...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam-electric_power_station#E...
Inducing a current by moving something in a magnetic field, or vice versa, may seem like simple designs, but perhaps that's why we haven't replaced them yet. Rotational motion seems easy to service and efficient.
Same with water being particularly easy to turn into a gas using heat, as well as being super plentiful on Earth. There are just a lot of things going for a steam turbine
We haven't found a better way to convert heat to electrical energy. We've done great things with solar, kinetic, gravity, etc.
I think the better analysis is to chart the efficiency of the conversion over time. I couldn't easily find a chart showing this, but I assume gigawatt scale turbines operating at 50%+ efficiency are modern engineering marvels compared to the earliest 7kW prototype made by Charles Parsons in 1884.