> On the other hand, I don't think this is related to Hinkley My bad; I'm mixing up EDF projects. > The country needs more new power plants I'd agree with th

> On the other hand, I don't think this is related to Hinkley My bad; I'm mixing up EDF projects. > The country needs more new power plants I'd agree with that sentiment. I'm disappointed, however, that a proposed (wishfully thought, perhaps?) approach to nuclear tech that I read about many years ago seems not to have been realised. Slightly off-topic, but I remember being excited by a Wired article in 2004, Let a Thousand Reactors Bloom [1]. This discussed modular, pebble-bed reactors (and even speculated on low-cost hydrogen generation as a byproduct) while being ultra-safe by virtue of the physics of its design: Physicists and engineers at Beijing’s Tsinghua University have made the first great leap forward in a quarter century, building a new nuclear power facility that promises to be a better way to harness the atom: a pebble-bed reactor. A reactor small enough to be assembled from mass-produced parts and cheap enough for customers without billion-dollar bank accounts. A reactor whose safety is a matter of physics, not operator skill or reinforced concrete. And, for a bona fide fairy-tale ending, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is labeled hydrogen. [1] https://www.wired.com/2004/09/china-5/ https://www.wired.com/2004/09/china-5/