I grew up in rural Poland, and still visit frequently. Trust me, it's really poor. It does a great job of presenting itself as richer than it is, but leave one of the metro areas like Warsaw, Kraków, Gdańsk, whatever, and you see people living in what would be considered abject poverty in the US. It can barely keep its existing infrastructure working well.

You find it hard to believe that one of Europe's poorer countries has trouble finding the €20bn over 10 years it will cost? The UK is having trouble affording that for Hinckley C.

Poland isn't "one of Europe's poorer countries" and many countries that operate nuclear power plants are poorer than Poland (such as: Argentina, Armenia, Bangladesh, Belarus, Brazil, Bulgaria, India, Iran, Mexico, Pakistan, Romania, South Africa, Turkey, Ukraine)

I wouldn't throw Brazil in there, Brazil has barely 2 functioning reactors (Angra I and Angra II) with the third one being stalled since 1984, restarted in 2007 and so far has no hope of being finished in time (announced for 2020 but now waiting investments to continue development).

We don't have trouble affording it in the UK, we have trouble with the morons in charge wanting to do it arse about face.

The smart way would be to commission half a dozen state of the art designs (the 2nd is cheaper easier than the first and so on) over a decade, the French did 15 reactors in about a decade and economies of scale and expertise make each successor simpler.

We desperately need more baseload supply to supplement on the ongoing renewables switch, the grid is is operating on the slimmest safety factor I can recall.