> should have stood the UK up as a permanent nuclear energy powerhouse It was a crash weapons program disguised as a civilian energy program, that very nearly

> should have stood the UK up as a permanent nuclear energy powerhouse It was a crash weapons program disguised as a civilian energy program, that very nearly went badly wrong at Windscale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire ; so much so that the site had to be renamed to Sellafield. The rollout was hampered by the choice of two ultimately dead end technologies, Magnox and AGR. Then it ran into the industrial unrest and general lack of money of the 1970s, during which the government cancelled its space program (Black Arrow), and very nearly cancelled Concorde. The "white heat of technology" had worn off. Thatcher attempted to restart it, resulting in Sizewell B, but of course after 26 April 1986 any new nuclear was completely unthinkable and that was the end until Hinkley C. Which is still not finished.