this when properly used is equal to the energy or the heat,if you like the wordbetter produced by two-thousand six-hundred tons of coal. That isuranium."[From footage of the Queen's opening address] "...atomic scientists, by a series of brilliantdiscoveries, have brought us to the threshold of a new age ...It is with pride that I now open Calder Hall, Britain's first atomic powerstation."The British governmentannounced that by 1965, half the country's electricity would come from nuclearpower. In the late fifties, the [United States] Atomic Energy Commissionmade films that portrayed an "atomic future" in America. Scientistsdesigned nuclear cars, planes and rockets. Others predicted whole new citiespowered by vast atomic engines. If, somehow, a product could be "atomic",it had to be good.Vladimir I. Merkin, designer of first Sovietcivilian reactor [subtitled] It was a golden age. Scientists and engineers werebursting with ideas. Suddenly anything seemed possible; the power of science was limitless.[Unidentified footage, mostly landscapes filmed from low-flying aircraft(American, 1950s?)] [Voiceover:] "Science for the world a dynamic world,moving rapidly, flying, reacting to flashes on the radarscreen; watching schedules where everything is calculated down to seconds and fractions ofseconds ... Science has permeated our very existence and can no longer detach itself..."[More unidentified footage, here (presumably) of the site for a nuclearpower plant] [Voiceover:] "The station is to be situated on the shoresof a forest lake. During the rest period, a magic silencereigns around the building site ..."But now, just when thescientists were being swept along on a wave of publicity, they began todiscover it was going to be far more difficult to produce nuclear power thanthey had first thought. The problem was the cost of building the reactors; theywere proving too expensive to compete with conventional fuels. In the SovietUnion, this led to increasing pressure to build fast, often without properprotection from nuclear radiation. In February 1957, the planner in charge ofthe whole nuclear power programme died from an accidental burst ofradioactivity.[Vladimir I. Merkin] We came under pressure to cut costs; there was adesire for this energy to be cheap and widely available. Although we understood [that] reactors had to be safe, wealways had to keep costs uppermost in our minds. We moved so fast [that] there simply wasn't time totake all the precautions. Maybe that's why safety began [sic] to be neglected inparticular, the possibility of a huge accident.Then, in October 1957, therewas a major accident in Britain.[Newsreel clip] [Voiceover:] "Emergency at Windscale atom plant [sic] and the milk fromtwo-hundred square miles offarmland is condemned as radioactive."The core of the reactorcaught fire and spewed high levels of radioactivity across northwest England.The radioactivity released was far worse than the public was told. It led somescientists to question the speed at which the technology was being pushed tocompete with fossil fuels. They included the scientist who had built Windscale, ChristopherHinton. He had been put in charge of implementing the Government's plans forcheap electricity.Sir Kelvin Spencer, Chief Scientist, Ministryof Power 19541959 Hinton was a thoroughly honest man; and when he foundthat all sorts of bogus tales had been told about the relative costs of electricity fromnuclear energy, he