On 01/05/2019 12:51, TOJ wrote:
On Wed, 01 May 2019 11:04:05 +0100, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

Except we are incapable of designing and building such things ourselves.

JOOI who designed and built our existing nuclear power stations?

We don't have the technical ability and experience to design new power
stations ourselves anymore - decades of green pressure and government
fear of the public response ensured that we didn't continue development
and so new recruits did not specialise in the areas needed.

We do have the ability to design small-scale units (such as submarine
reactors) and could, with the will, time and the money, replace the lost
expertise.

While the long term goal should be to replace our expertise, in the
short term we can use outside companies to design and build - with as
much as possible done in the UK.

What government could have done is finance new-build instead of looking
to the Chinese to do it and having a high strike price, which simply
exports the profits to China for the life of the plant.

SteveW