3. Industrial development and feedback: 1965-1995

From the 1960s onwards, power shifted from researchers to industrialists, resulting in a ruthless selection of projects based above all on economic criteria, tempered however by the safety requirements that grew stronger at the same time. This period saw the triumph of water reactors, H ₂ O and D ₂ O, with water playing both the role of coolant and moderator, along with the Soviet variant of graphite-moderated boiling water reactors (RBMK). Of all the other thermal neutron reactor concepts, only helium-cooled high-temperature gas reactors (HTRs) attempted to resist the tidal wave of water-cooled reactors. A widely shared forward-looking vision at the time was that the technical-economic advantages of nuclear power would be such that its development would be massive and natural uranium resources rapidly...