#cegb

Some highlights from one of our recent acquisitions, a booklet from the Dungeness nuclear power station (the Magnox station later known as Dungeness A, as the first of the AGR stations to start construction, Dungeness B, was built on the same site) in southeastern England, circa 1966. Includes the amazing armorial bearings of the Central Electricity Generating Board.

And now I want a set of Central Electricity Generating Board table mats, as posted by @JamesODavies on Twitter.

1961 C.E.G.B.

On Tuesday, 17 July 1984, at the British Rail test track at Old Dalby, Leicestershire, a flask of the type used for transporting spent MAGNOX fuel from power stations across Britain to the reprocessing plant at Sellafield was deliberately rammed by a Diesel locomotive (46009) and three passenger coaches, at a speed of 160 km/h. The locomotive was utterly demolished. The coaches were wrecked. And the flask? It needed a new coat of paint.

The intent was to placate critics of nuclear energy, who professed not to be satisfied by operational experience and engineering studies showing that the transport of spent nuclear fuel was safe. As Dr Sir Walter Marshall (later Lord Marshall of Goring) said, “If you’re not convinced by this, you’re not going to be convinced by anything!”

From a 1980 pamphlet advertising the Central Electricity Generating Board’s speakers–bureau service and power–plant tours.

This booklet from the Central Electricity Generating Board (PDF, 8 MB), a kind of prospectus for the Dungeness B nuclear power station, credits “design” to Ernest Hoch, and it seems he gave them their money’s worth!

Interestingly, it was printed before Dungeness A Magnox station was on power. Dungeness B, unfortunately, was a great disappointment. None of the AGRs has been a great performer, technically or economically, but despite being the first to start construction, Dungeness B actually started up in 1983, seven years after Hinkley Point B and Hunterston B. The overall operating life of Dungeness B was only 35 years, with generation ending in 2018 (although EdF waited a couple of years to declare it shut down), whereas Hunterston B continued until 2021, and Hinkley Point B until 2022.

Two adverts from the Central Electricity Generating Board's campaign in the early 1960s highlighting the necessity of electricity pylons (for Americans: transmission towers).

Via Moa K. Carlsson on Twitter, who notes explicitly their relevance in an era when pylon construction is once again needed as the grid is reconfigured from centralised coal, oil, and gas plants to wind, solar, and other, more distributed, renewable energy sources.