In Ambrose Evans-Pritchard’s interesting article on nuclear
past and possible nuclear futures (“ Britain
should leap-frog Hinkley and lead 21st Century nuclear revolution, Daily Telegraph, 18 August http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/08/17/britain-should-leap-frog-hinkley-and-lead-21st-century-nuclear-r/)
he misleadingly asserts: “Our Queen opened the world's first
nuclear power plant in 1956 at Calder Hall.”
Her Majesty
did indeed open Calder Hall, on the Sellafield site ( then called Windscale). But
Calder Hall was not a normal nuclear power plant, but a
plutonium production plant run by the UK Atomic Energy Authority for the Ministry
of Defence to provide nuclear explosive materials for nuclear warheads.
This fact was clearly stated at the time of the plant’s
opening, in a remarkable little book entitled Calder Hall: The Story of
Britain’s First Atomic Power Station, written by Kenneth Jay, and published
by the Government’s Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell to mark
Calder Hall’s commissioning, when Mr Jay wrote:
“Major plants built for
military purposes such as Calder Hall are being used as prototypes for civil
plants . . . the plant has been designed as a dual-purpose plant to produce
plutonium for military purposes as well as electric power . . . it would be
wrong to pretend that the civil programme has not benefitted from, and is not
to some extent dependent upon, the military programme."
I would also
be sceptical about the claims of the
promoters of a potential atomic alternative to Hinkley C. Such pies-in-the-sky options
have been postulated for decades; and any projected costs of electricity from
such fantasy reactors is pure guesswork, always erring on the optimistic low
end of the scale.
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