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To keep operating you need to extract heat, make power, and drive it from that power, or it goes out or blows radioactive burning molten lithium all over.

In practice, no such plant will ever exist, because there is no plausible prospect of the power being competitively priced.

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In the same way there was no plausible prospect of launching cargo to orbit for <$1000/kg at the turn of the century?

No, in the sense that the costs for the competition, renewables + storage, are still falling at a reliably exponential rate, leaving everything else far, far behind. There is no reasonable prospect of catching up even ignoring capital cost and just comparing operating expense. The cost of maintaining steam turbines will not be coming down at all, never mind going to zero.

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