IWorker with Ion horizontal loading machine in the reactor, HInkley Point

IWorker with Ion horizontal loading machine in the reactor, HInkley Point. After the success of the prototype Calder Hall nuclear power station which went on line in 1956, the Atomic Energy Authority commissioned a string of gas cooled reactors . Picturesque Hinkley Point was the site for reactor A , a Magnox reactor designed in the 1950s but not on line until 1965. The demand for high grade plutonium but also the attractions of a viable alternative to coal meant that nuclear power was the way ahead during the 1950s and 1960s. The public was also captured by the claim that electricity from nuclear plants would be too cheap to meter. It was not until the next millennium that a considerable proportion of national power in Britain came from nuclear sources- some 25%. Hinkley Point Nuclear Power Station was closed in 2000 and is being decommissioned. Photograph by Walter Nurnberg (1907-1991) who transformed industrial photography after WWII using film studio lighting techniques. Photographie Photograph taken in 1965 by Walter Nurnberg who transformed industrial photography after WWII using film studio lighting techniques. ©SSPL/NMeM/Walter Nurnberg