Have you ever asked yourself why this is? There are two basic types of reasons why the UK nuclear industry does so poorly. The first reason are scientifically illiterate "activists" that delay and block construction. But this is only part of it. The other and possibly bigger part is that the UK doesn't build stock nuclear plants. They "Wallace and Grommet" things far too often. In this case, that means not building proven designs but instead building experimental ones. Specifically building high temp reactors which haven't been built before. Normally (at least in the US) we build pilot plants (think 1/10th the normal size, so 100MW or so) and then once we get the kinks worked out, we built the full size plant. In the UK they just built full sized experimental reactors. This is why the UK has so many problems with (the cost of) their nuclear plants. Had they built a stock design (like the French) they wouldn't have these problems.

The French are building Hinkley, and are financially responsible for a huge portion of it, so I don’t that having them involved is a panacea.