The Sizewell B nuclear power plant in Suffolk, England;image via ft.com

How power station designs reveal our changing attitudes to nuclear energy.

I suppose that, on a visit to a nuclear power station, every journalist harbours a sneaky, rather weird desire for some kind of incident to break out just at that moment. The sweaty signs of rising panic, the flashing lights, the official denials. The kind of cover-up that James Bridges’ film The China Syndrome, about a TV crew that surreptitiously films a near-disaster, captured so intensely. That film was released just days before a real meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear generator in Pennsylvania in 1979. It captured perfectly a 1970s paranoia, just as Alan J Pakula’s The Parallax View had five years earlier.

But, of course, most journalists are never that lucky. Or unlucky. There was a brief fire alarm on the day I visited the Sizewell B power station on England’s Suffolk coast. But it was a test. Touring the plant, I became slightly excited to see a door marked “Outage War Room” so I asked the manager, Martin Cubitt, about it. “Oh yes,” he said. “I think that was from when there was more of an American influence.” What’s in there? I asked. “It’s just a room,” he said. “It’s now called ‘Conference Room 4.’?” It was one of those days.......Continue Reading

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