Nuclear power plant closes at Sellafield

The world's first commercial nuclear power station, Calder Hall, a Magnox reactor at Sellafield, on the coast of Cumbria, in the UK closed down yesterday.

The closure which was immediately welcomed by the Green Party environment spokesman Mr Ciarán Cuffe TD who said it was "hopefully the beginning of the end of the Sellafield complex".

The closure, which came after 47 years of frequently controversial operation, was marked by a ceremony marking its "remarkable achievements", according to British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) the plant operator.

Environmental campaigners said however the shutdown was long overdue and called for the closure of the five remaining Magnox plants.

Calder Hall was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth in October 1956. It was originally due to have started closing in 2006. However low electricity prices have rendered it uneconomic and BNFL announced last June that the plant would close early.

The first three of its four reactors were shut in late 2001 for technical reasons, and were not reopened as originally planned.

Environmental campaign group Greenpeace said that Britain's other five Magnox plants, named for their use of magnesium alloy fuel containers, were also "well past their sell-by date".

"All of them need to be closed urgently for all sorts of reasons. They are loss-making and will become an increasing safety concern as they get older," a spokesman said.

Calder Hall and its sister station Chapelcross in southwest Scotland, which began production in 1959, were the pioneers of Britain's nuclear power industry.

Calder Hall is part of BNFL's larger operation at Sellafield, which also contains a major reprocessing plant for nuclear waste. International activists have consistently called for its closure, and such was the bad press that in the 1980s the complex's name was changed from Windscale to Sellafield in an apparent attempt to improve its image. Mr Cuffe said the Calder Hall experience demonstrated that nuclear power is not a cheap fuel option. - Additional reporting by PA