Back to the Time Of The Hippie calendar
On 17 October 1956 Her Majesty the Queen opened the world's very first full-scale nuclear power station at Calder Hall in Cumberland (now Cumbria). Her Majesty said in her opening speech that "This new power, which has proved itself such a terrifying weapon of destruction is harnessed for the first time for the common good of our community." Workington, 15 miles (24 km) along the coast was the first town in the world to receive light, heat and power from nuclear energy. A further nine nuclear power stations were built across Britain over the next 10 years. The technology came to supply about a quarter of Britain's electricity needs. Calder Hall, which had gone through several name changes and finished as Sellafield, closed in 2003 although the site is still used to reprocess nuclear waste.
Her Majesty's remarks were very true because at that time several countries were developing nuclear weapons and testing them in remote areas. Many people in the United Kingdom were unhappy about this and out of that came one of the most iconic symbols we have in the world today. In February 1958 a group of people formed an organisation known as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). They wanted all countries of the world to get rid of their nuclear weapons. The devastation caused by the two atomic bombs dropped on Japanese cities was there for all to see.
At Easter 1958 members of CND along with other similar organisations took part in a 4 day march from London to Aldermaston, where Britain manufactured its nuclear weapons, to protest. Before the march they wanted to have a symbol to display on the way and they asked a man called Gerald Holton to design something. He came up with the figure on the left that we now all know so well. It was, he said, based on the semaphore flag signals for the letters d (for disarmament) and n (for nuclear). You can check the semaphore alphabet below. Over the years it has come to be a universal symbol for peace and hope.
Semaphore is a way of sending messages over a short distance using flags. It was widely used at sea before radio was invented. The flags are coloured differently based on whether the signals are sent by sea or by land. At sea, the flags are coloured red and yellow while on land they are white and blue
The Aldermaston marches continued during the 1960s, always at Easter, with thousands of people taking part but by the mid-sixties that form of protest began to die away. The CND still exist and still campaign and countries still develop nuclear weapons. Those countries will, in most cases, tell you it is not for attack but for defence; it is a deterrent, stopping other countries from using such weapons. If it works, then we will survive as no one will use such weapons against us; if it fails, it is too late to save us. It's a weird idea. We spend loads of money, and I mean loads of money, developing a weapon that we hope we will never use and if we do use it then it means it has failed. On the basis that we will only be safe from nuclear war if no one country has a nuclear weapon, the CND idea is good. On the basis that is unlikely to happen...................I am left to wonder. What do you think?
Returning to nuclear power stations and 1956, one major advantage of these was that they produced less smoky emissions to fill the atmosphere. Of course if anything went wrong, as happened in the USA in 1979, in what is now Ukraine in 1986 and in Japan as recently as 2011, the disaster was massive. Smoke from power stations, factories and even homes burning coal fires as most did in those days, caused terrible problems. In 1952 London suffered five days of a killer-smog which, it was estimated, took the lives of 10,000 people. Smog was a combination of heavy fog and fumes from coal fires, vehicles and power plants. It happened in December and so it was cold and people and offices needed fires to keep warm. Shortly before Calder Hall was opened the government introduced the Clean Air Act. Many cities in England, it wasn't just London, suffered from terrible smog. The Clean Air Act was an attempt, quite successful, at making sure it never happened again.
Forward to 1957AD
