Re 1 - it really is quite astonishing how uninterested nuclear plants seem to be in burning their fuel.

It makes perfect sense if you consider the original reasoning - to make weapons, then progressively adapted to make them less useful for making weapons.

Still, I can't help but feel that fans of this mythical "innovative private sector" have a lot to answer for. Here's a 100-fold optimization in fuel use - not in fact a trivial cost, even for nukes - that's been on the table for more than fifty years, with the only drawback that nobody has literally given you the schematics. Now we're burning a shit-ton of gas and funding the tanks for the privilege.