France did a good job building nuclear reactor with existing technology and refining them. However they have done a really, really poor job in developing and r

France did a good job building nuclear reactor with existing technology and refining them. However they have done a really, really poor job in developing and rolling out next generation technology. If they had continued to build and evolve the technology they would not only not have the problems they have now. Unfortunately government lead efforts are not always very innovative and the French population got infect by some of the same anti-nuclear sentiment as other places.