LONDON — Back in the 1950s, Battersea Power Station, a towering brick structure on the south bank of the Thames, supplied a fifth of London’s electricity, an economic engine that even powered Buckingham Palace.
The coal-fired plant was decommissioned decades ago. But on Thursday evening, in an art deco, gold-and-glass control room in the recently retrofitted power station — now a multi-use development complete with apartments and a cinema — the U.K. government and the biotech company Moderna celebrated the launch of a 10-year partnership, one they touted as a major economic and health security advance.
If the symbolism wasn’t explicit enough, speakers at the event couldn’t help but make it so.