The DOI matches its Crossref record.
Nuclear Power Reactors: A Study in Technological Lock-in
Abstract
Recent theory has predicted that if competing technologies operate under dynamic increasing returns, one, possibly inferior, technology will dominate the market. The history of nuclear power technology is used to illustrate these results. Light water is considered inferior to other technologies, yet it dominates the market for power reactors. This is largely due to the early adoption and heavy development by the U.S. Navy of light water for submarine propulsion. When a market for civilian power emerged, light water had a large head start, and by the time other technologies were ready to enter the market, light water was entrenched.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cited by
Unruh, G. C. (2000) · Energy Policy · doi:10.1016/s0301-4215(00)00070-7 · Cited by 3,304
Sectoral systems of innovation and production
Malerba, F. (2002) · Research Policy · doi:10.1016/s0048-7333(01)00139-1 · Cited by 2,733
Carbon lock-in: types, causes, and policy implications
Seto, K. C., Davis, S. J., Mitchell, R. B., Stokes, E. C., Unruh, G., & Ürge-Vorsatz, D. (2016) · Annual Review of Environment and Resources · doi:10.1146/annurev-environ-110615-085934 · Cited by 1,346
Networks, platforms, and strategy: Emerging views and next steps
McIntyre, D. P., & Srinivasan, A. (2017) · Strategic Management Journal · doi:10.1002/smj.2596 · Cited by 1,109
Fifty Years of Empirical Studies of Innovative Activity and Performance
Cohen, W. M. (2010) · Handbook of the Economics of Innovation · doi:10.1016/s0169-7218(10)01004-x · Cited by 962
Metadata
- Authors
- Cowan, R.
- Venue
- The Journal of Economic History
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 1990-09
- Volume
- 50
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 541-567
- ISSN
- 0022-0507 (ISSN-L)
- 1471-6372
- OpenAlex
- W2092773742
- Cited by
- 576
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 3.33
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Nuclear Power Reactors: A Study in Technological Lock-in. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1017/s0022050700037153
- The paper
- Cowan, R. (1990). Nuclear Power Reactors: A Study in Technological Lock-in. The Journal of Economic History. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0022050700037153
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
