At Hinckley, the director is gleeful. Then an alarm warns: 'Contamination'

After Tony Blair's endorsement, only the £30bn cost of building reactors seems a stumbling block John Vidal, environment editorSaturday May 20, 2006The Guardian
Les Francis, director of Hinckley B, one of Britain's largest nuclear power stations, stands in a vast hall on the top of his reactor. All around him are dials and knobs, red telephones, alarms, arrows, big yellow signs with exclamation marks, trip switches and loudspeakers. It's like Goldfinger without the fat man stroking a cat.
Mr Francis can barely control his glee. In the week that Tony Blair told business that nuclear power was back on the agenda "with a vengeance" and Gordon Brown said he agreed with the prime minister that nuclear should replace nuclear, it seemed to the industry that the battle had been won.


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"The Lib Dems want me to speak. Labour, too. Yes, we're back", says Mr Francis.
Meanwhile, a miracle of controlled nature is taking place just below his feet in the reactor core. Atoms are splitting, uranium neutrons are bombarding each other, the heat generated in the chain reaction is about 700C and in the equally massive turbine halls next door 3% of all Britain's electricity is being produced. It's enough to light every home in south-west England.
But the physical drama taking place below our feet is barely matched by Mr Francis's contentment. "See, we're on top of the reactor, and there is no radiation at all," he says. "Eh, Roy", he calls to one of his staff. "What's your [radiation] dose-meter read?"
"Never had a dose in 27 years, Les," says Roy. "No bullshit. Lovely, safe place to work, this."
"Ok," he says. "You get your bonus later."
Mr Francis is an old-fashioned, no-nonsense east London engineer, trained in the 1960s in small coal and oil power stations. Hinckley B is a big, old-fashioned 30-year-old nuclear power workhorse, built in north Somerset when civil nuclear power promised infinite, cheap electricity. Within a few years, both director and power station will have been decommissioned.
The energy review is not expected to report fully until later in the summer, but a formal decision is now expected soon. The only thing perhaps stopping a new nuclear programme may be the matter of who stumps up for the £30bn building costs.
But the official backing was just what Hinckley - as well as most people living near Britain's major nuclear stations - wanted to hear. Hinckley A is being decommissioned and B may only survive five more years. It employs 485 people in a poor rural area. A new station, says Mr Francis, would meet little opposition, there's land available, and planning consent was given - but allowed to lapse - in the 1990s. Bring it on, he suggests. It could be built in five years.
"I think eight to 10 stations are needed. It would bring about £30m into the economy here if we build another one here. Do we need new nuclear? I can't see the UK accepting less electricity. Like I can't imagine a house not having a TV or there not being hospitals."
Mr Francis accepts that 10% of renewable energy is needed but he can barely hide his distaste for it. Photovoltaic electricity, he says, "depends on arsenic and lead" while nuclear is "clean and green". And though he says his reactor has to be shut down for roughly 140 days a year for maintenance, he dismisses wind as "intermittent". "On a personal level I wouldn't want a turbine in my backyard. I like bluetits and starlings," he says.
On a corporate level, too, British Energy doesn't want competition. Last year it objected to a 12-turbine wind farm being built almost next door to the Hinckley reactor. It persuaded the planners that the strong Somerset wind could sheer off a turbine's seven tonne rotor blade and fling it 900 metres though the air, over one nuclear power station and straight into another. YourEnergy, the wind company, was bemused but will be giving new evidence later this year.
And he dismisses people who disagree with him. "We need a sensible debate. Not with people scaremongering. That's what the activists do.
"The big issue is whether there is a manufacturing base to build them. If China and India and other countries order theirs, then there may not be the capacity in Europe to build them. You can go to the shop and it may be sold out."
He is also worried that if they are built, there may not be enough engineers to run them. "There are very few people coming out of British universities with the qualifications needed. It is an issue not just for the UK. We have to start now."
To leave the the reactor chamber, we must pass through a full body radiation scanner. You stand in a metal chamber and a woman's voice welcomes you.
"Come closer," says the voice. "5,4,3,2,1 ..." But something is wrong. "Contamination ... contamination ... contamination," says the dislocated voice, rather urgently, like a Dalek.
"They're ever so sensitive these machines. On certain days you do get these atmospheric conditions ...", says a PR man, not entirely convincingly.
But Mr Francis is reassuring. "It's radon gas. It's quite natural. It knew it was you," he says.Special reportThe nuclear industryUseful linksBritish EnergyDepartment of Trade and IndustryBritish Nuclear Fuels LtdCampaign for Nuclear DisarmamentGreenpeaceHSE nuclear glossaryCome Clean WMD awareness programmeUK atomic energy authorityNational Radiological Protection BoardFriends of the EarthWorld Nuclear AssociationWorld Nuclear Transport Institute