Hey, path dependence in another market! "The market tends to choose a dominant design before it’s optimal, and it tends to under-explore."
At least this article didn't cite the QWERTY keyboard, or "Windows" as an example. That would really have brought out the trolls.
It would seem the nuclear industry should be Least prone to this. Every power plant is a unique, huge invenstment leaving plenty of room in the budget to plan and test.
The article describes the path in detail. It gives US government regulation as one of the reasons for "underexploring" the design space.
This reminds me of another article posted on HN about how design of satellites revolved around these having to fit on ICBMs.