Publication Laka-library:
Workers' power, not nuclear power
| Author | M.Simons |
| Date | July 1980 |
| Classification | 2.05.0.00/21 (UNITED KINGDOM - GENERAL) |
| Front | 
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From the publication:
I. INTRODUCTION. In February 1955 the British Government produced a White Paper entitled 'A Programme of Nuclear Power', outlining plans for the construction of 12 nuclear power stations over the next ten years, with a total capacity of 1500 - 2000 Megawatts (MW)1. The design was to be based on the nuclear reactors already being built at Calder Hall for the production of military plutonium, with electricity as a by-product. The size of the proposed programme was subsequently tripled in 1957, but only about three-quarters of this target was actually built; furthermore, the capacity of these stations has since been substantially reduced by downrating. (See Table 1.) The stations are known as 'Magnox' from the magnesium oxide used as cladding for the natural uranium fuel. There was ambiguity about the purpose of these stations from the start. When the Queen opened the Calder Hall station itself in October 1956, she hailed it as the start of a new era of 'peaceful' atomic energy, making no mention of its military function2. Yet, when two years later Britain and the USA signed the Mutual Defence Agreement to exchange nuclear materials for military purposes, there was open speculation that the plutonium to be supplied to the USA might come from the civil stations, and a Government minister defended the use of the civil stations to meet 'our defence requirements'. There was ambiguity also over economics. The Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB), which came into existence in January 1958, is under a statutory duty to provide an 'economical' supply of electricity, and its predecessors were bound by a similar duty since 1947. The Government was informed from the start that the Magnox stations would be over SO% more expensive to run than coal-fired stations, the difference being made up by a very speculative figure called the 'plutonium credit'. By the time the Government tripled the size of the original programme in 1957, this value had already been shown to be a 400% overestimate. Yet the Government pressed ahead, in the face of determined resistance from the chairman of the CEGB, who objected to the size of the enlarged programme precisely on the grounds that it would be uneconomic. Was the Government therefore not colluding in a breach of the law?
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