Arguably the reason for the success of renewables in the UK is that the government gave big subsidy opportunities early on, and then made cost reduction a condition of future subsidy. And there is a strong grid operator that can do strategic planning. This worked for wind, solar, and maybe battery storage now. And this regulated/grid based approach is what deals with issues like intermittency. People may forget these things in a discussion on the web, but the grid and regulators do not.

And actually Hinckley and Sizewell do fit within this model. They have been given very high strike prices and hopefully will be able to deliver a more cost effective pipeline of projects later on. But this approach is more difficult with large, monolithic projects.