28 identical coastal mega-sites delivering green hydrogen, energy sovereignty, district heating, and long-term national resilience for the United Kingdom.
Built by the State. Owned by the People. Presented here as a long-range national theory.
CFF is a first-of-a-kind national build. But first-of-a-kind does not mean first-impossible. Britain has done this before.
The Victorian sewers. The railways. The town gas conversion. The industrial revolution itself. These were not small upgrades or short-term fixes. They were nation-shaping systems built at scale, under pressure, through doubt, criticism, cost fear, and political resistance — and they still changed the country.
Every major British build worth remembering had doubters. People said it was too big, too expensive, too disruptive, too ambitious, or too difficult to coordinate. Yet Britain built anyway — and the country was stronger for it.
So the real question is not whether CFF is bold. The question is whether modern Britain still has the will to do what earlier Britain did: think long, build properly, and leave behind infrastructure that serves generations rather than patching over decline with one short-term fix after another.
We should call on that tradition again. No more stopgaps. No more managed decline. Do it once. Do it right. Build something worthy of the country.
A network of 28 identical coastal mega-sites forming a unified national energy infrastructure — delivering hydrogen, electricity, water security, and public dividends. Not just a power station. A National Wealth Engine.
Each CFF site takes in seawater and sends out hydrogen, oxygen, desalinated water, critical minerals, and electricity. It is not just a power station. It is a complete industrial ecosystem.
196 identical SMR units across the fleet allow UK factories to perfect the manufacturing process, allowing manufacturing methods to standardise and mature over the rollout — the “Fleet Effect.”
“CFF isn’t just a power project; it’s a National Wealth Engine.”
Each CFF site is designed as a modular platform: built in standard phases, expandable in repeatable units, and capable of scaling as public funds, demand, and national priorities require.
Expansion does not require redesigning the whole system each time. New capacity can be added through standardised modules tied into the existing site backbone. That makes the programme easier to finance, easier to replicate, and easier to expand over time.
470 MWe each, 3.29 GWe total per site. N+1 resilience — losing one unit only reduces output by 14%. Fleet manufacturing supports standardisation, resilience, and repeatable delivery.
Seawater intake produces SOEC-compatible ultra-pure water, plus potable water and a Strategic Water Reserve (Unit 8: 50,000 m³/day per site). Unit 8 is an additional desalination unit added to every mega-site, capable of operating independently when required during drought conditions — ensuring agriculture never fails and crops are always delivered, providing an extra layer of national food security.
Industrial-scale high-temperature steam electrolysis into hydrogen and oxygen. The primary purpose of each site — hydrogen production for hard-to-abate sectors, not just electricity. SOEC is especially well suited to CFF because it can use abundant SMR heat as well as electricity, reducing electrical demand per kilogram of hydrogen and improving overall system efficiency.
RO brine is concentrated to ~23% with public service use first: council road de-icer is supplied before any commercial sale. Surplus brine and recovered salts can then move into chemical feedstocks for chlor-alkali uses, water-treatment chemicals, industrial process salt, and other domestic manufacturing inputs. DLE-linked lithium claims are future-facing only and depend on the technology maturing to commercial reliability at scale. Nothing goes back to sea.
SMR waste heat could be piped through a long-term district heating model to surrounding communities. The aim would be to reduce heating burden from the Grid by reducing ASHP in the area and improve local energy resilience where practical. This approach is already proven at scale — Copenhagen’s district heating system serves approximately 1 million people with over 98% reliability, using waste-to-energy, biomass, large-scale heat pumps, and seawater cooling, achieving extremely low CO₂ emissions and covering ~98% of buildings in the Greater Copenhagen metro area.
Clear separation between nuclear and hydrogen/desalination zones. Reduces correlated risk and protects communities.