Like I suspect many of you, I sat and marvelled at the craftsmanship unveiled on the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral following its remarkable restoration. As I looked on, I was reminded of an idea put forward by Heinrich Heine, a 19th Century German writer. In a letter he penned in 1857, he recounted being stood with a friend before Amiens Cathedral who asked, “Why it is that we can no longer build such heaps?” He responded, “In those days men had convictions, whereas we moderns only have opinions and something more is needed than an opinion to build a Gothic cathedral.”
Back in the Middle Ages of course people were compelled to use their creativity for God’s glory and to this day I think it fair to say we continue to be filled with wonder at what can be accomplished on the strength of a belief. Over the last 70 years we have of course concerned ourselves with building Cathedrals of a different kind, not ecclesiastical places of worship, but the great Cathedrals of nuclear power production dotted around our coastline. They are a testimony to firm conviction of our great 20th Century scientists and engineers and their progressive thinking.
After Calder Hall ‘A’ Station was connected to the Grid on the 27th August 1956, immediately countries from around the world turned to Britain, and in particular to Christopher Hinton, Managing Director of the UKAEA Industrial Group, as they pondered what they ought to do to take advantage of the possibilities it presented. On the 15th March 1957, Hinton delivered a lecture titled, ‘The Future for Nuclear Power’, to the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences. Presenting the economic case, he showed how from 1800 to 1954, the Equivalent Capital Cost of Steam Power Stations had steadily fallen as the technology evolved and steam temperatures increased. He pointed out the same trend could be expected for Nuclear Steam Power Stations, noting also:
At Calder Hall the pressure shell which encloses the reactor core is a 37ft × 70ft cylindrical vessel having domed ends. Such a vessel must necessarily be fabricated in-situ. It is interesting to notice that this feature of site fabrication seems to be characteristic of the early stages of development of all prime movers. All Watt’s early steam engines were site fabricated without previous assembly in the fabricating workshops. Just as this feature of conventional power plant design has disappeared with the development of the art, so, in all probability, it will largely disappear as a feature of the construction of nuclear power plants, but it is a characteristic which exists and it will persist for the next decade.
The advent of pre-fabricated higher temperature Small Modular Reactors and further advances in design will undoubtedly see the reductions in Equivalent Capital Cost for nuclear power production predicted by Hinton realised. Yet, our desire to get the first SMR off the drawing-board have been beset by political indecision which has led to delays. Meanwhile, energy producers have become ever more divided in their endless exchange of opinions. So, what then is now needed for politicians to be sufficiently moved to lend their weight to new nuclear construction?
Back in 1956 a nuclear energy ideal was created across society founded on scientific and economic reasoning. Despite several setbacks, that ideal has endured in the U.K, due in no small part to the extensive educational and public outreach activities throughout the latter half of the last century. That work continues, but not at anything like the same level. Since the placing of the UKAEA into a trading fund in 1986, the privatisation of the electricity industry in the early 1990’s and the break-up and sell-off of British Nuclear Fuels in 2005, the industry has become increasingly reliant on organisations like the Nuclear Industry Association, the Nuclear Institute and the Supporters of Nuclear Energy to champion the benefits of nuclear power. But, if we are to turn the tide of public opinion, we must instil in the minds of the public the same nuclear ideal remains central to modernist thinking.
In 2024 the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority took the step of publishing a ‘Heritage Strategy’, possibly the first of its kind anywhere in the world. It recognizes that, in the words of the political theorist, John Schaar, ‘The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made’. Our valuing and promotion of our incredibly rich nuclear industrial heritage is critical to influencing future energy related decision making. It comprises many things that are of the past, in the present and are to be used to create a better future. Let us keep in mind, it took several hundred years to build Notre Dame Cathedral in the Middle Ages, yet only five years to completely restore it with 21st Century know-how and national conviction. Our own conviction in nuclear power comes not so much ‘to the Glory of God’, but to the ‘Glory of Humanity’.