Worker stands under vast cooling pipes at Sizewell Nuclear Power Station, 1965

Worker stands under vast cooling pipes at Sizewell Nuclear Power Station, 1965. After the success of the prototype Calder Hall nuclear power station which went on line in 1956, the Atomic Energy Authority commissioned a further 9 Magnox gas cooled reactors .including Sizewell A completed in 1958. The demand for high grade plutonium ( possible from Magnox reactors) 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 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%. Photograph by Walter Nurnberg (1907-1991) who transformed industrial photography after WWII using film studio lighting techniques. Photographie ©SSPL/NMeM/Walter Nurnberg