Some clarifications... (Score 1)

The U.S. has a number of different reactor designs, both within the PWR class and the Boiling Water Reactor class entirely because the reactors were still being evolved. It's not that we made a poor decisions per se, its just that other countries had the benefit of our development experience. You see similar build out programs in other nuclear dependent countries such as Korea which derives the majority of their power from the KSNP a System-80 plant design purchased from Combustion Engineering.

Obviously it's easier to maintain a lot of the same type of technology which allows you to take advantage of well known economies of scale. Westinghouse's new reactor design the AP1000 takes full advantage of such standardization in components and design.