Ten things you never knew about... nuclear power

Sixty years ago today, on October 17, 1956, the Queen officially opened Calder Hall, Britain’s first nuclear power station, near Sellafield in Cumbria. 1. Calder Hall was the world’s first power station to generate electricity from nuclear energy on an industrial scale. 2. In its early years, the main task of Calder Hall was to produce weapons-grade plutonium. Generating electricity was a secondary task. 3. Worldwide, 31 countries now use nuclear power generated by more than 430 nuclear reactors. 4. 11 per cent of the world’s energy requirements are now produced by nuclear power. 5. The first nuclear-powered submarine was the USS Nautilus, launched by the US in 1954. 6. Three major disasters have occurred in nuclear power history: Three Mile Island (USA), Chernobyl (USSR, now Ukraine) and Fukushima (Japan). 7. France is the country most reliant on nuclear power which supplies more than 78 per cent of its energy requirement. The UK is on 19 per cent. 8. The civil nuclear industry employs more than 63,000 skilled people throughout the UK. 9. Kazakhstan produces 41 p 9er cent of the uranium used for nuclear power around the world. 10. Calder Hall was closed on March 31, 2003 after 47 years in use.