This film short celebrates the opening of Calder Hall, the world’s first and oldest industrial-scale nuclear power station, at Sellafield in Cumbria. The plant was originally opened by the Queen in 1956 at the start of a new “Atomic Age.” While the plant was ostensibly made to produce electricity, the main reason for building Calder Hall was to make plutonium for the nuclear weapons programme, a fact admitted five years after it was constructed. The station produced 180 megawatts of heat, most of which was used on site, but 40 megawatts of electricity went into the grid – tiny by comparison with a modern station. Calder Hall was the first of a series of magnox stations, so-called because the fuel cans were made of magnesium alloy. The second one, Chapelcross in Dumfries, was also built for military reasons. Altogether 11 stations, each slightly larger than the last, were eventually built, producing 10% of Britain’s electricity. The plant was decommissioned in 2003 but it is expected to take many decades to decontaminate the site.

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