> surprised there's so many nuclear power companies

This is actually American capitalism working at its finest.

Have you seen a video of a slime mold "solving" a maze? It reaches out in every direction with thin tendrils until it makes contact. (Then the game shifts.)

We have a sense, like a slime mold picking up on the "scent" of food, that there is energy. But there are lots of good hypotheses for how we get there. So we try them. Not exhaustively. But multiply. When someone demonstrates they've got it, the game will shift to consolidation and scaling.