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The United Kingdom had a fairly extensive independent military nuclear program prior to being granted access to American nuclear weapons and reactor designs under the 1958 Mutual Defense Agreement. What if the Mutual Defense Agreement had failed to happen as historically or even entirely? Perhaps Rickover and Naval Reactors pull strings to prevent export of the then state of the art S5W naval reactor for the HMS Dreadnought and the British end up with an S3W naval reactor or even nothing at all. Perhaps the British aren't granted access to the most advanced weapons information or are barred from resource sharing.

In any case, what happens if it doesn't go quite as planned? Is a joint British-French program possible? Could the British develop their own naval reactors, and if so might it result water cooled designs such as the Steam Generating Heavy Water Reactor being selected to follow Magnox instead of the Advanced Gas Cooled Reactor? Could the British even follow in the steps of France and do everything in house?
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