Power Flowing From Calder Hall Station

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28104, 20 October 1956, Page 6

Power Flowing From Calder Hall Station

(N.Z. Press Association —Copyright)

LONDON, October 18.

The Queen today threw the switch that sent electric current from Britain’s first atomic power station at Calder Hall, Cumberland, into the nation’s power mains. With the Calder Hall switch-on, Britain took the lead in the international race to harness atomic power for peaceful uses.

At present only a small output of about 10 megawatts, enough to supply a fair sized town, is flowing from Calder Hall. This output will be stepped up until the plant is producing about 90 megawatts early next year. By 1958, when a second atomic station is opened at Calder Hall, the first

station will have about doubled that output. , . The Calder Hall station, situated in the remote north-west corner of England on the edge of the Lake District, cost more than £16,500.000 and took three years and a half to build. Speaking to a gathering of distinguished British and foreign scientists. diplomats and statesmen at today’s ceremony, the Queen said: “Today. as power from Calder Hal] begins to flow into the national grid, all- of us here know that we are present at the making of history.” The Queen spoke of what she called a series of brilliant scientific discoveries which had brought the world to the threshold of a new age. “Solution to Crisis” She said: “We have also known that on that threshold mankind has reached a point of crisis. “Today we are, in a sense, seeing a solution of that crisis as this new power, which has proved itself to be such a terrifying weapon of destruction, is harnessed for the first time for the common good of our community.” As the Queen operated a lever on the ceremonial dais in front of the power station, the needle on a giant "meter” over the station entrance began to swing, recording the flow of power as electricity began surging into , the national grid. The Lord Privy Seal (Mr R. A. Butler) making the first speech of the opening ceremony, said it might be that soon after 1965 every new power station built in Britain would be atomic powered. He said that by 1975 the total output of atomic power would certainly be more than, and might possibly be double, the total electricity output of all the power stations supplying the country’s present needs.