Tue 22 Mar 2011
Nuclear power is important for the rich because of its links to nuclear weapons.
Britain’s first nuclear plant was Windscale, which opened in 1956.
It was later renamed Sellafield—because the name Windscale was so associated with a 1957 disaster.
Right from the start, the aim was always to produce weapons.
Plutonium was produced there to fuel Britain’s atomic bomb programme.
The problems came fast. A serious fire in a reactor chimney in 1957 released radiation across the surrounding countryside.
At the time it was the world’s worst nuclear accident to date.
From the 1960s, Windscale began reprocessing spent nuclear fuel—which continues to this day in the now named Thorp reprocessing site at Sellafield.
Sellafield still dumps eight million litres of nuclear waste into the sea—every day.