This gallery contains press advertisements from the early years of the British civil nuclear power programme, 1954-60, issued by the companies which were involved in nuclear construction. This period covers the construction and commissioning of Calder Hall, the world’s first commercial nuclear power station, and several of the advertisements refer to work on this site.
The image of Britain’s nuclear future created in these adverts is an optimistic one of scientific and technical excellence leading to the provision of cheap and limitless power for civil purposes. This is the bright side of the dark and threatening nuclear future (or non-future) represented during these same Cold War years by the threat of the Atomic Bomb.
The advertisements reproduced here are scanned directly from contemporary copies of The Times newspaper. Please make allowances for the often poor quality of the original newsprint, and the toll taken on paper and ink by the intervening years of less than careful storage.
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| Babcock & Wilcox Ltd: ‘the age of atomic steam’.
30 March 1954. View>> |
Taylor Woodrow: ‘making the atom a worker’. 27 Oct 1954. View>> | Whessoe Ltd, ‘steel plate for atomic energy’. 13 May
1955. View>> |
Taylor Woodrow: ‘Britain’s first atomic energy
generating station’. 17 Nov 1955. View>> |
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| Babcock & Wilcox Ltd: ‘Immense! Immense!’. 11
Aug 1956. View>> |
Balfour Beatty: ‘nuclear power for Britain’. 19 Dec
1956. View>> |
Elliott: ‘comprehensive instrumentation for nuclear power
stations’. 17 Oct 1956. View>>
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Philips Electrical Ltd: ‘health instrumentation for personnel protection’. 17 Oct 1956. View>> |
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| Babcock & Wilcox Ltd: ‘first harvest’. 17 Oct
1956. View>> |
Brush: ‘the UK Atomic Energy Authority’. 17 Oct
1956. View>> |
British Constructional Steelwork Association: ‘steel and
nuclear power’. 22 Oct 1957. View>> |
Talbot Stead: ‘tubes for atomic energy’. 18 Sep
1957. View>> |
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| Shell Petroleum: ‘within the lethal zone Shell meets the
challenge’. 25 Apr 1958. View>> |
Mitchell Engineering Ltd: ‘muscle is the most costly power on
earth’. 8 Dec 1958. View>> |
Steel Company of Wales Ltd: ‘steel, the atom - and
power’. 25 Feb 1958. View>>
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Taylor Woodrow: ‘more power depends on teamwork’. 5
Feb 1960. View>> |
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