I agree with your comments, and certainly hope that your predictions come true. Technology has saved our cookies before, maybe it can do so again. It also has the habit of eating our cookies, too.

Breeders were demonstrated as workable decades ago, ( I visted the Rincón plant in Mayaguez, PR, shortly after it was decommissioned! )although they were abandoned for potential safety issues. Fast reactors using molten sodium as coolant, and bringing that material near superheated water in heat exchangers is a very risky combination. Besides, they are inherently unstable, any turbulence in the coolant/moderator leads to increased neutron flux which increases the turbulence, etc. Light water reactors have a built-in safety feature which tends to lower reaction rates when turbulence or bubbles form, tending to push the reactor back into equilibrium. A thread over on Space discussed this a while back, and it appears Thorium-fueled reactors may be a way around this. It's worth following up on.

I'll go on record as saying nukes are the way to go, and we should be investing and researching that technology. The safety shortcomings of nuclear power have been exaggerated, but they are not trivial either.
In order to make nuclear power work we're going to have to start developing it in a big way before it becomes economically feasible to do so. By economically feasible, I mean the entire cost of the whole infrastructure has to be factored in, not just the plant construction and operation costs.