We lost the sense of urgency and the connection between our decisions, what happens, and why we feel the way we do. It was also helped along by the ‘green field’ nature of Nuclear at the time (writing new code is easier than fixing a legacy code base, and making a new design when you don’t know and have to consider the bazillion regulations and gotchas since discovered is also easier), and a general ‘do it’ mindset after the massive destruction of the war and ongoing rebuilding.
Mostly now we’re not in a hurry because we ‘already have stuff that works’ because we’ve had so many of those prior projects ‘just work’ (hint: they didn’t, it took massive hard work to make them happen - but the people alive today were not the ones getting dirty on the ground there, so they don’t know that). And we haven’t had many big disasters around them yet (as in electric grid collapses for a month in winter and can’t be restarted) to give it more urgency and importance.
In some ways I think we’re in a classic ‘rich kid’ fallacy.
Hey, we have so much money, why do we need to be responsible right? We can be irresponsible because even if we crash the Porsche we got for our birthday, we’ll get a new one in a week anyway.
Well, we only have so much money because the prior generation worked so hard (and stole a bunch of stuff and murdered a bunch of people, but hey whatever - sometimes folks need their illusions), and while the inheritance might last
if we keep pissing it away, it usually doesn’t for very long. And one of these days we’re going to crash the Porsche and end up with life long medical issues.
It does tend to self correct, but oooof does the other side of the curve hurt. And sometimes whatever mindset or situation created the wealth in the first place just never is recaptured. Greece and Italy are certainly not on a trajectory back to world defining empire status anytime soon, and are more
worried about how to keep
their pensioners fed.