The problem is simply that nuclear power is a technology ill-suited to the most critical of innovation practices: learning by doing.

technologies pushed on the world by governments, before they are really ready, sometimes falter, where they might have done better if allowed to progress a little more slowly. The transcontinental railroads in the United States were all failures, resulting in bankruptcies, except the one privately funded one. One cannot help thinking that nuclear

The story of nuclear power is a cautionary tale of how innovation falters, and even goes backwards, if it cannot evolve.

Invention, he famously said, is 1 per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration. Yet in effect what he was doing was not invention, so much as innovation: turning ideas into practical, reliable and affordable reality.

He remained relentlessly focused on finding out what the world needed and then inventing ways of meeting the needs, rather than the other way around. The method of invention was always trial and error.

innovation is itself a product, the manufacturing of which is a team effort requiring trial and error.

The light bulb emerged inexorably from the combined technologies of the day. It was bound to appear when it did, given the progress of other technologies.

Innovation seems so obvious in retrospect but is impossible to predict at the time.

Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision. PETER DRUCKER