[RetroTechie]

Maybe that's the biggest problem, really.

The design, deployment, regulatory/political hurdles, and the long operational lifetime of nuclear power plants, make that any improvements take a loooonng time to bear fruit.

Inertia of the installed base with its problems (and history), makes new development near-impossible.

That situation propably won't improve until newer designs accumulate a multi-decade track record of safety, or fusion power gets commercialized.