In the early 1950s, village schools on the west Cumbrian coast grappled with an unusual problem. They struggled to recruit physics teachers. It wasn’t the children putting off the candidates, though, it was their parents. Britain’s first industrial nuclear complex had been founded in 1950 at Windscale — now known as Sellafield — a remote spot about 10 miles south of Whitehaven. Hundreds of Britain’s brightest university graduates — physicists, chemists and engineers — were brought in from around the country to run the new reactors.
Teachers, used to the children of farmers, suddenly found the homework they set was being rejected as too basic. Parents were giving children their own, more advanced, assignments.
This was a brave new world. In the wake of the Second World War, with its economy in tatters and its empire slipping out of its grasp, Britain was in need of a boost. Nuclear science was seen as essential to restoring its place in the world order. The first two reactors at Windscale were built to provide fuel for atomic weapons. But in 1956 a new reactor, called Calder Hall, was constructed there. It was the world’s first nuclear plant to generate electricity.
Nearly 70 years later Britain is again in need of a boost and once again, the government has turned to nuclear power.
“Nuclear is coming home,” Boris Johnson said on Thursday, announcing that up to eight nuclear power stations would be approved this decade: the central tenet of his new energy security strategy. “In the country that was the first to split the atom, the first truly to harness its power to light our homes and drive our factories, we will once again lead the way,” he said.
But if Johnson is going to use nuclear history to justify his strategy, perhaps he needs to look a little deeper, because Windscale was also the site of one of the world’s first serious nuclear accidents.
In October 1957, a fire raged for three days in one of the reactors after changes to increase production. Through the heroism of staff, and a significant degree of luck, the catastrophe was contained. But significant radiation was released. Milk from cows within 200 square miles was contaminated. In 1982 officials estimated 260 people developed cancer and 32 people died as a result.
The two first reactors at Windscale were closed, but the clean-up is still under way today. Last November the top of the chimney in which the fire blazed was removed as part of the demolition.
The renowned nuclear historian Serhii Plokhy describes the episode in a forthcoming book and points out: “The existing nuclear industry is an open-ended liability.” No nuclear power station has ever been fully decommissioned.
In Atoms and Ashes, Plokhy, 64, a Ukrainian historian at Harvard, explores the causes and consequences of Windscale and five other nuclear accidents: at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific in 1954, Kyshtym in Russia in 1957, Three Mile Island in the US in 1979, Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986 and Fukushima in Japan in 2011.
While most of these accidents took place in the formative years of nuclear science, Plokhy argues they could easily happen again. “Technology was improved as a result, and every accident contributed to the shaping of subsequent safety procedures and culture,” he writes. “And yet nuclear accidents occur again and again. Many of the political, economic, social, and cultural factors that led to the accidents of the past are still with us today, making the nuclear industry vulnerable to repeating old mistakes in new and unexpected ways.”
Some 440 nuclear reactors are in operation today, providing about a tenth of the world’s electricity, but the phaseout of fossil fuels is exerting pressure for a new wave of nuclear. This, Plokhy argues, would be a mistake. Nuclear energy, he states, remains “inherently unsafe”.
After Chernobyl — which is estimated to have killed anywhere between 4,000 and 50,000 people — safety was significantly tightened. “The nuclear industry persuaded the rest of the world that the lessons of Chernobyl had been learned, and nothing of the kind could happen again,” Plokhy writes. “It was wishful thinking at best.” In 2011 the Fukushima disaster forced 155,000 people to leave their homes, 37,000 of whom remain displaced.
Where does this leave the UK? Johnson is trying to boost energy independence because of the Ukraine war. But, speaking from Boston, Massachusetts, Plokhy insists Johnson is making a mistake. He points to the recent experience of his own country, where Russian troops have occupied the defunct Chernobyl works and the facility at Zaporizhzhya, Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant. Neither occupation has led to disaster, but it could have been different. “The news coming from Ukraine suggests that any one of them could be turned into a sitting dirty bomb,” he says.
What about the claims of the nuclear industry that equipment is safer than ever? James Murphy, the chief strategy officer at the National Nuclear Laboratory, says: “Nuclear energy is the safest form of energy in the world, based on the number of people who have been injured or killed as a consequence of generating or constructing that energy.”
According to 2012 analysis by Statista, only 90 people had been killed per thousand terawatt-hours of energy produced from nuclear, compared with 150 per thousand TWh for wind, if construction accidents are included. (For coal the death rate stretches to 100,000.) This, though, uses official figures, which put the death toll from Fukushima at one and Chernobyl at 31.
Plokhy said this type of argument echoed the one made by scientists down the generations, pointing to Soviet claims in the 1980s that an explosion in an RBMK reactor — the type used in Chernobyl — would be impossible.
“History doesn’t end just because you don’t want it to continue,” he says. Eventually mistakes will be made, he believes, with huge consequences. And the more plants in operation, the higher the probability of accidents. He pointed to research by Trevor Sweeting and Thomas Rose, scientists at University College London, which estimates a core meltdown accident will take place every 37,000 reactor-years. If they are right, at current rates of generation we will see a serious accident in the next 15 years.
New technology — the low-cost modular reactors that will form the next generation of power stations — is potentially safer. But it comes with new risks. “There is no such thing as new technology starting its career without major screw-ups,” Plokhy says.
That does not mean, however, the world should pull out of nuclear power. Plokhy is critical of Germany’s decision to rapidly close its nuclear plants in the aftermath of Fukushima, a move that raised its reliance on its highly polluting “dirty” coal and Russian gas. “Today’s war in Ukraine is at least partially funded by the money that Germany continues to pay Russia for natural gas,” he says.
Once nuclear stations are built, they should be operated for their full lifetime, and then safely decommissioned, he says. As he writes in Atoms and Ashes: “We cannot afford to lose the more than 10 per cent of world electricity produced with little or no carbon emission and fill the gap with fossil fuels that will create more greenhouse gases. Nor can we abandon the industry to its current state of economic hardship, because that would only mean inviting the next accident sooner rather than later.”
This is a key point. Plokhy is worried about the nuclear power stations in use — many of which are old. In Britain, the seven reactors in operation are between 27 and 46 years old and many have had their retirement postponed. All but one, Sizewell B in Suffolk, are due for decommissioning by the end of the decade. Hinkley Point B, in Somerset, which was scheduled for closure in 2016, is still running. But it will be closed by July after cracks were discovered in the graphite core. “This is one of the most dangerous periods, given how little money there is in the nuclear industry and the old reactors,” says Plokhy. Instead of spending on new reactors, he says, funding should go on making sure plants see out the rest of their life safely, while the world invests in renewable energy to replace them.
Then there is the nuclear waste. At the moment, nearly all the country’s radioactive waste is stored at Sellafield, at huge cost. The government has been consulting for 15 years on plans to create a “geological disposal facility”, a £12 billion bunker 1,000m below ground to store radioactive waste for eternity. Discussions are under way with Copeland borough council, the authority where Sellafield is sited, to build the bunker. Previous discussions fell apart in 2013.
The other drawback of nuclear power is the price. Hinkley Point C, due to open in 2026, will receive a guaranteed price of £92.50 per megawatt hour for 35 years, adjusted for inflation. When the deal was signed in 2013, it did not look like bad value for money. New offshore wind, at that time, cost £155/MWh, and mass solar projects £120. Now the cost of both has dropped to less than £40/MWh.
Of course the sun does not always shine, the wind does not always blow. Intermittency is a problem. But energy storage is rapidly improving. There are also alternative, untapped, technologies — tidal power, hydropower, and possibly, one day, the far safer alternative to nuclear power, nuclear fusion.
Johnson wants to approve the new power stations by the end of the decade, but they are unlikely to be built within the next 20 years. By the time they are ready, the problem may have disappeared.
As Plokhy puts it: “In terms of the new reactors, in terms of the future, my argument is that we have to look in a different direction.”
Fallout and meltdowns
Bikini Atoll, March 1, 1954
The US test of a hydrogen bomb in the Marshall Islands was an environmental disaster.
Kyshtym, September 29, 1957
A tank of liquid nuclear waste exploded at the Mayak nuclear weapons plant in Russia.
Windscale, October 10, 1957
Radiation spread across Cumbria and beyond, linked to at least 260 cases of cancer.
Three Mile Island, March 28, 1979
A partial meltdown in Pennsylvania, led to 150,000 people voluntarily leaving the area.
Chernobyl, April 26, 1986
The world’s worst nuclear disaster forced the resettlement of about 400,000 people.
Fukushima, March 11, 2011
A huge tsunami flooded the plant in Japan, leading to three meltdowns and three hydrogen explosions.
Atoms and Ashes: From Bikini Atoll to Fukushima, by Serhii Plokhy, is published by Allen Lane on May 17
