Bertrand Barre, with the government-owned company Areva, the world's largest builder of nuclear power stations, says the next generation will be even safer.

NPR: France Presses Ahead with Nuclear Power

"Typically in the boat-builder world, builders would do everything just because they could, " says Johns.

FORBES: Magazine Article

On the topic of robot makers, this week also saw robot builder Simon Burfield put together the world's first working wheelchair made of Lego bricks.

ENGADGET: Inhabitat's Week in Green: 30-foot 'Buckyball', Olympic stadium Lego replica and the 'Mantabot'

This tradition goes back at least as far as the Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin (the best in the world, a century ago), which was paid for by the builder of the Chicago elevated railway.

ECONOMIST: Telescopes are getting bigger, better and less tangible

This fourth generation boat-builder's boats go all over the world.

BBC: Here be dragons

Then the framed builder gets out of jail, and Beard's world comes tumbling down.

ECONOMIST: How not to write ��state-of-the-nation�� fiction