Michael Collins - The Nuclear Sublime

Contemporaneous illustration of one of Calder Hall’s two reactors published shortly before its official opening in 1956

Nuclear energy is generated when the nucleus of an atom splits (nuclear fission) or combines with another nucleus (nuclear fusion). These nuclear reactions release a large amount of energy in the form of heat, which can then be used to generate electricity through steam turbines. Nuclear power stations have fission reactors; fusion ones remain at the developmental stage.

Britain’s civil nuclear energy programme was driven by its policy to be an independent military nuclear power. Initially, the reactors were designed primarily to produce plutonium for the atomic weapons programme. One such reactor in Windscale caught fire in 1957, causing the country’s worst nuclear accident.

Calder Hall, the world’s first commercial nuclear power station, was opened in 1956, followed by a further 26 reactors over the following 15 years. In 1968 the amount of electricity generated from nuclear power stations in Britain was more than half as much again as the rest of the world (excluding the USSR).

by control rods which absorb excess neutrons and limit the reaction. The reactor is known as the “pile” because the first reactor used a pile of graphite blocks as the moderator. The rods are inserted through the “pile cap”.

Once removed from the reactor, the fuel rods are placed in the “pond”, a pool of water, to control their temperature and radiation. In the pond, electromagnetic radiation from the fuel creates a unique blue glow in the water, a phenomenon termed Cherenkov radiation.

The advantage of the experimental fusion devices is that the fuels deuterium and tritium are more abundant than uranium. Additionally, fusion produces significantly less radioactive waste. Fusion devices are called “Tokamak”, the Russian acronym for toroidal (beigel-shaped) chamber with magnetic coils.

The first generation of these reactors was Magnox. British-designed, they were gas-cooled and used magnesium non-oxidising (hence Magnox) fuel rods. They were superseded by the Advanced Gas-Cooled Reactor (AGR) and the Pressurised Water Reactor (PWR). The designs for Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C are based on the European Pressurised Water Reactor (EPR).

In 2023, the British government announced a programme to provide a quarter of the UK’s electricity from nuclear energy by 2050 through a combination of EPRs and small modular reactors (SMRs). Currently, SMRs are in the process of development.

In a nuclear power station, uranium is loaded into fuel rods and inserted into the reactor to create a controlled chain reaction. This is moderated

Previous spread: Detail of Inside the Dounreay Fast Reactor sphere on the reactor floor, No 1, 2023 Overleaf: Detail of Mortuary Holes B78, Dragon Reactor, Winfrith, No 5, 2023

The ornamental sign at the entrance to the village of Sizewell is a wooden quartering in the shape of a shield. The panels show a boathouse, a seagull, a smuggler and a lobster boat. Above them, in a sea-blue roundel, is an emblem of the atomic nucleus. Previously a small Suffolk fishing hamlet, Sizewell is the home of two nuclear power stations1, A and B. Sizewell A, which was opened in 1967, is a Magnox reactor and operated until the end of 2006. Sizewell B is Britain’s only commercial pressurised water reactor.

Contained within a distinctive white dome, the reactor has been operational since 1995. Every 18 months, it is shut down for routine maintenance, a procedure known as outage, which is the perfect time to photograph inside the reactor. At the plant’s reception, after handing over my mobile phone and having my camera equipment X-rayed, I was escorted to the security manager’s office. He was dressed in surgical scrubs. I was handed a pair and instructed to change into them. Then we put on overalls, gloves, socks and boots, and wrapped tape around our wrists and ankles. Next, the camera tripod’s legs were wrapped in plastic, complete with latex gloves on its feet. I was allowed only one lens, which had to be mounted to the camera. On the way to the tunnel leading into the reactor, along with everything we carried, we were measured for radiation, as we would be on the way out. I was warned that if my camera became contaminated, it would be confiscated. “Don’t touch anything,” I was told. “Imagine everything’s covered in dogshit.”

Although the conditions didn’t necessitate wearing respirators, and we were following stringent safety precautions, as we walked through the tunnel I felt waves of anticipation and anxiety. The inside of the dome was a deep golden orange, unlike any orange I’d ever seen, and the light reflecting off the round steel walls created a celestial glow with hellish undertones.

There was scaffolding and machinery around the edge of the dome, with small teams of engineers going about their work. In the middle, submerged in borated water that acts as a radiation absorbing coolant, was the reactor with its head removed. The radiation in the water causes the atoms to move faster than the speed of light2, releasing photons, which creates a unique

Advanced Gas-Cooled Reactor, Sellafield, 2021 ©Michael Collins Digital chromogenic print, 152.2 x 114.2 cm

shade of blue, Cherenkov blue, named after the Russian physicist who discovered it. Encased by the otherworldly orange, the deadly blue water shone like a sapphire. We circled the reactor until I saw what looked like the best vantage point, quite close to the side the of pool. Pointing to the spot, I asked the engineer in charge of that section if I could photograph from there. She agreed, on the strict understanding that I did not stand any closer. And I was told to be quick. I went through a gate in the barrier and placed the camera and tripod on the decking. There was no sound or smell and the water was as clear as a mountain pool. The reactor was sticking up from the depths, ringed by a light green loop. A long, twisted hose lay lifeless in the water. The blue was like looking into an eye you’d never see again. Oh, to dive in. When I carried the camera back to the engineer, I thanked her and apologised for taking so long, explaining that while she might have become accustomed to it, for me it was the most beguiling sight I had ever seen. “Oh no,” came the reply. “Every time, I’m utterly entranced.”

Dounreay Fast Reactor Turbine, c.1958 ©Nuclear Decommissioning Authority

Nuclear power is the incarnation of the sublime. The concept of the sublime rose to pre-eminence in the 18th century, its principles elucidated by the Irish philosopher Edmund Burke: “The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature, when those causes operate most powerfully, is Astonishment, and astonishment is that state of the soul in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror... Whatever therefore is terrible, with regard to sight, is sublime too…”3 Fear and awe course through our experience of the sublime. Ciphers embodying these conflicting emotions, the solitary figures facing the lonesome landscapes in Caspar David Friedrich’s paintings, enthralled and overwhelmed by nature, invite the viewer to stand in their stead.

The first record of the sublime dates back to an anonymous Roman-era Greek literary text, On the Sublime, which extolled the virtue of a willingness to emotionally engage with dread and wonder, a concept that captivated the Romantic artists of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Alone and at large, they ventured outside the comfort zone of the known into the realm beyond understanding; the young Wordsworth on the moonlit lake rowing his little boat “with trembling oars” away from the “grim shape” of the mountain rising up on the far side4. In his Critique of Pure Reason Immanuel Kant posited that the sublime was our response to these limits of human reason.

“The feeling of the sublime is at once a feeling of displeasure, arising from the inadequacy of imagination in the aesthetic estimation of magnitude to attain its estimation of reason, and a simultaneous awakened pleasure, arising from this very judgement of the inadequacy of sense of being in accord with ideas of reason...”5 When Trinity, the world’s first nuclear explosion, was detonated on the Alamogordo Bombing Range on 16th July 1945, one of the scientists, positioned only 10,000 feet away, later testified: “The whole country was lighted by a searing light with the intensity many times that of the midday sun. It was golden, purple, violet, gray and blue. It lighted every peak, crevasse, and ridge of the nearby mountain range with a clarity and beauty that cannot be described but must be seen to be imagined... to be followed almost immediately by the strong, sustained, awesome roar which warned of doomsday...”6 Two hundred years after the Grand Tour took the gentry to see Etna’s volcanic activity, there were guided tours to view hydrogen bomb explosions.

In Hawaii, tourists flocked to the beaches to watch a hydrogen bomb being detonated at night over the Pacific – an atomic firework display: “The blueblack tropical night suddenly turned into a hot lime green. It was brighter than noon. The green changed into a lemonade pink… and finally, terribly, blood red. It was as if someone had poured a bucket of blood on the sky.”7 Earthrise, Apollo 8’s iconic photograph showing our fragile little planet pictured from the moon, pointed the lens at the Pandora’s Box opened by nuclear technology and the space race – twin sciences born from a military imperative. The rockets in the space programme were based on Wernher von Braun’s V2 technology, just as the first nuclear reactors were designed to produce plutonium for bombs, with the generation of electricity almost a side effect. Even though a nuclear power station produces superheated steam to drive its electricity-generating turbines like any other power station, be it coal or gas-fired, the apocalyptic possibilities associated with nuclear lurk in the back of the public’s mind.

The principal arguments against nuclear power are safety and waste.

Its industry has a history blighted with accidents such as those at Windscale, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima. Official cover-ups, lack of transparency, and the extremely complex nature of the science, have inhibited widespread understanding and contributed to an ill-informed and highly contentious debate. Even though the safety record has improved exponentially in recent decades, there is a deep mistrust based on past mistakes. But the biggest fear is waste. Although strontium-90 and cesium-137 have half-lives of approximately 30 years, plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,000 years8. The term “half-life” means that only half of the radioactivity will decay in that period.

So far, our governments and industrialists have proved incapable of assuming the responsibility for long-term planning, as the Earth’s rising temperatures, melting glaciers and continuously rising sea levels attest.

The emphasis in the nuclear energy debate has shifted in response to technical and political developments. Proponents argue that nuclear plants do not pollute the atmosphere or create carbon emissions, unlike those powered by fossil fuels. Nuclear is claimed to be the answer to a country’s fuel security – a perennial concern given the volatile nature of Middle Eastern

Dounreay Material Test Reactor Charge Plug, c.1957 ©Nuclear Decommissioning Authority

politics, and a significantly heightened issue with the West’s reliance on Russian supplies. Opponents point to the ecological costs of uranium mining and the vast resources required to construct nuclear power stations. A counter-argument is that smaller, modular nuclear reactors can be built on the sites of decommissioned reactors. Still in the development stage is the as yet unproven promise of the fusion reactors, with their claims of unlimited power and reduced nuclear waste.

Britain has five operational nuclear power stations, 14 that are no longer functioning, and two research sites whose reactors have produced power

the time it would take for nuclear waste’s radioactivity to dissipate is equal to that which separates the 21st century from the Stone Age, an unfathomable crevasse exists in our ability to truly comprehend the chronology of its consequences.

The nuclear energy industry is barely eight decades old. On 17th October 1956, at the official opening ceremony for Calder Hall, the world’s first atomic power station (as they were then called), Queen Elizabeth II declared: “This new power, which has proved itself to be such a terrifying weapon of destruction, is harnessed for the first time for the common good of our community.”9 Although Calder Hall supplied electricity to the national grid, its primary output remained military-grade plutonium. Previously, nuclear reactors were built exclusively for the production of plutonium; the heat they generated was regarded as a byproduct and discarded. Calder Hall was constructed on the Cumbrian nuclear industrial estate containing the Windscale Piles, the military’s plutonium-producing reactors. A year after Calder Hall opened, one of the Windscale Piles caught fire, resulting in a potentially catastrophic nuclear accident.10

Reactor Building, Chapelcross, No.5, 2022 ©Michael Collins Digital chromogenic print, 1330 x 1142 cm

for the grid. For safety and practical reasons, they tend to be in isolated locations with access to a plentiful supply of water. Built in the 1950s on a disused RAF airfield on the northernmost tip of Scotland, Dounreay’s white metal dome is the landmark that dominates the view across the barren moorland.

In religious architecture, the dome is a sacred shape, symbolic of the heavens, but in industry this totem of modernity is synonymous with danger, a sign of toxic containment. Ominously beautiful, emphatic and uncompromising, it is both the purest example of function over form and the architectural dragon’s lair. Along with nuclear energy’s assurances, it comes with a yellow and black radiation warning sign, which is now irrevocably stamped into our geology, delineating our age from everything that preceded it. Given that

A twin atomic power station was built at Chapelcross, a former RAF base by the Solway Firth. As bleak and windswept as Dounreay, Chapelcross ceased generation decades ago and is in the lengthy process of decommissioning.

Like Windscale, its primary purpose was to produce plutonium. At the far end of the site, beyond the line of four old reactors with their stark shapes and tall chimneys, there is a bright metal shed – a long-term storage facility for radioactive waste. In the no man’s land behind the barbed wire, where the cooling towers once stood, a drove of hares has made the place their own. Obsolete power stations have an air of entropy and extinction. Sites of energy become moribund. On the grounds of coal-powered plants, vast black expanses stretch along the colliery railway tracks, a grim reminder of the mountains of coal that we burned, a legacy that is already here to haunt us. Redundant industrial structures tend to be scrapped, demolished and erased, but the turbine halls at Chapelcross and at Calder Hall, complete with all their contents, remain in place. Calder Hall ceased operating in 2003, Chapelcross in 2004; they are effectively private museums without the ubiquitous interpretation department’s speech bubbles. This is what the turbine hall at Tate Modern would have looked like before it was converted

into a public art atrium. A significant proportion of Britain’s retired nuclear power stations are still standing, and because of the issues surrounding their decommissioning (dealing with the radioactive legacy and working in close proximity to it) much of the original infrastructure and equipment remain almost intact. Contrary to industry’s practice of obliterating its history before it can be monumentalised, a significant element of nuclear energy’s archaeology is still standing.

The upper tier of the turbine hall at Calder Hall is glazed from ceiling to floor, casting a cathedral light on the eight huge Parsons turbines that run the length of the long rectangular building. Each was painted a bright colour – pink, yellow, green, red, blue, orange – demarcating the pipework of the individual turbines in an exuberant and utterly practical style that decades of dust haven’t diminished. Where once there would have been the roar of spinning machinery, a bloodless silence prevails. Although the turbines’ configuration of castings, curves, tubes and pipework is the product of pure engineering, they have an undeniably sculptural beauty precisely because of their implacably industrial agenda.

Engineering’s matter-of-fact approach is mirrored in the tradition of industrial photography, which began with the blueprint. In 1842, Sir John Herschel invented a photosensitive paper he named the cyanotype, a neologism formed from the Greek kuáneos (dark blue) and túpos (impression). Once exposed to the light, Herschel’s photosensitive paper would turn blue – apart from where it had been covered with an image (to create a cyanotype), an object (to form a photogram11), or a drawing (a blueprint). As with the turbine hall pipework, industry used photography for function not form; the straightforward industrial aesthetic preceded the aestheticising of industry. Its relationship with photography was always pragmatic. Once it was announced that photography could create images “impressed by the agency of Light alone, without any aid from the artist’s pencil”12, engineers, with their keen eye for innovation, seized upon the invention as a means of making accurate and detailed records of their projects.13 While the advent of photography brought with it a tedious argument about whether it was an art or not, industry’s “record picture” photographers

Diagram of Pile Cap with Pins, Showing Last Fission in Reactor 2, in 2006, Dungeness, 2022 ©Michael Collins. Digital chromogenic print, 1522 x 1022 cm

honed an aesthetic that in its essence remains fundamentally unchanged: compositional clarity, even light, uncontrived perspective. About a century later, this aesthetic was brought to its zenith by the German artists Bernd and Hilla Becher, whose photographs of industrial structures set the template for this approach to photography, which became seminal in contemporary art. As Hilla Becher stated so succinctly, “... the particular strength of photography lies in an absolutely realistic recording of the world. This sets it apart from all other image media; photography can do this better than anything else. And the more precisely it depicts objects, the stronger its magical effect on the observer”.14 The quality of photography that remained to be realised in this renaissance of “record picture” photography was depth of field, which remained essentially flat due to the fundamentally uniform focus that was customarily employed to achieve an impression of overall sharpness. Historically, in the earliest landscape photography (and the camera obscura images that preceded it) foreground definition would be sacrificed in order to focus on the epicentre. Even though improvements in camera and film technology

made it easier to deepen the focus and established this as a norm, photography’s overall “autofocus” feel persisted, apart from in specialist genres such as still life, sculpture, and commercial product photography. Challenging the constraints of monoplane focus is photography’s equivalent of theatre’s fourth wall. Caravaggio’s quasi cinematic realism disrupted the presumption of the flat in painting, but it was the development of the much-derided trompe l’oeil by 17th century Dutch painters such as Adriaen van der Spelt and Frans van Mieris the Elder that literally drew back the curtain on further possibilities for realism. Still Life with a Flower Garland and a Curtain (1658) shows a posy with a pink peony and a red tulip leaning out of the gloom, their petals palpably within touching distance. It was the convention in the 17th century Netherlands for paintings to be covered by a curtain to protect them from fading. Still Life with a Flower Garland and a Curtain has a blue satin one, only partially drawn, its drapery perfectly painted.

Scorned for being gimmicky and decorative, trompe l’oeil is painting’s circus act, exposing its artifice. The origins of trompe l’oeil extend back to the 5th century BC painting contest between Zeuxis and Parrhasius15, and includes the cartellini (imitations of small paper notes) on early Renaissance portraits. Georges Braques was originally a trompe l’oeil painter, techniques he subverted to create his nonrepresentational Cubist paintings.16 The term trompe l’oeil was invented by Louis Léopold Boilly, whose painting of a scattering of coins and notes on a marble tabletop, exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1800, proved so convincing “... that a protective barrier had to be erected, it only affirmed the suspicion that illusion appealed to the lowest form of sensation: the desire to reach out and touch”.17 The neonatal haptic instinct is the most elementary, instilling that primal urge to move from looking to touching. One sense incites another, just as synaesthesia triggers associations between them. The relationship between sight and touch was one of the mysteries addressed in the Enlightenment in the debate between the empiricists, whose contention was that the mind is incapable of creating a representation from the different senses, and therefore could not convert the haptic into the optic, and the rationalists, who reasoned that the mind is capable of matching the tactile to the visual. In what became known as Molyneux’s Problem, the Irish philosopher questioned whether “a man born blind … and taught by his touch to distin-

A Critique of Pure Photography, 2023 ©Michael Collins Digital chromogenic print, 152.2 x 114.2 cm

guish between a cube and a sphere of the same metal… Suppose then the cube and sphere placed on a table, and the blind man to be made to see; quaere, Whether by his sight, before he touched them, he could now distinguish and tell which is the globe, which the cube?”18 Early (and subsequent) experiments on cataract patients showed that the formerly blind could not immediately recognise the shapes they had felt. However, these crude tests gave no allowance or time for the patients’ rudimentary vision to develop, nor for them to grow accustomed to the sense of sight.19 In a reversal of Molyneux’s haptic to optic, it was through the genre of sculpture photography that its intersensory potential developed. Early practitioners used raking light and foreground focus to replicate the physical shape and texture of sculpture through photography’s indexicality. For example, Leonida Caldesi’s photographs of the Parthenon sculptures (1857–59) are so close up and detailed, their torsos seem to almost press against the lens,

the texture of the scoured marble abrasive to the eye. Beautifully sensual, synaesthetic photography, this genre has been undervalued as an applied art (much like industrial record pictures), the example of their aesthetic possibilities overlooked. Coupled together, the record picture aesthetic and the tactility of sculpture photography create an enhanced realism. Using digital photography, it’s possible to expose a succession of frames, each focused progressively further back into the composition, achieving a previously unattainable depth of field. This lends the photograph’s flat plane an illusion of three dimensionality, a kind of photographic trompe l’oeil. Unlike a conventional photograph, one with such deep focus has a heightened realism, a “sculptural realism”.

Photography is the medium of traces, trapping the dust motes of our lives through its lens, exposing the quodlibet of incidental details. Like a recording of someone’s voice, the clearer and more detailed the photograph, the more evident the timbre and nuances of speech, the more textured the silences, and the greater the sense of being there in the room. Rather than being compressed on a single plane, sculptural realism lets the eye peer over, around and past the myriad elements in a composition, visually feeling their shapes, roaming from the foreground further into the picture. Everything has greater presence, each shape more mass; the viewer can reach into the depth of field. The buttons on Sizewell A’s reactor control panel (plate 51) sit up proud from the picture plane ready to be pressed. The grime on the top of the old dials in Dounreay Fast Reactor’s airlock (plate 4) would blacken your finger; the tubular steel wall behind them would feel cold. Sculptural realism brings a visceral immediacy; the then and there is here and now. Careful what you touch.

Radiation is the invisible, silent, scentless dread. Even the smoothest surfaces carry suspicion, the concrete and steel both banal and sinister. In decommissioned nuclear sites, while the decades-old obsolescence has the solemnity of a mighty industrial past, its nuclear legacy has an ill-boding atmosphere. On active sites, the pristine conditions are as sterile as a dental surgery, but however minute the level of sieverts, radiation remains a darkly numinous word. Anyone going into a radioactive area is measured with a full-body scanner and a hand scanner and is then issued with an electronic personal dosimeter; the same procedure is repeated on the way out. A few

Control Panel detail, Pile Cap Crane Control No. 1 A, Sizewell A, 2022 ©Michael Collins Digital chromogenic print, 152.2 x 114.2 cm

weeks after photographing at a site, an electronic personal dosimeter report arrives in the post with a record of the exposure levels in millisieverts. (My reading from Dounreay was 0.001 mSv.) Photography’s senses see in colour. It soaks up colour and expresses it in its lantern light, conjuring a psychologically charged chroma that triggers the unconscious. The lime-green wall and yellow flood lights in Wylfa’s Reactor No 2 (plate 57) hum in an alien hue, turning the interior’s vast steel drum into a dystopian tank. The orange of the nuclear inspection cell at Trawsfynydd (plate 38) is mellow and menacing, bathing the deadly chamber in a colour that is unsettlingly enticing. Orange is said to be an uplifting colour, synonymous with warmth, security and sensuality. In some cultures, orange is a sacred colour. The Ancient Egyptians painted their tombs orange. It is also the colour of high-visibility safety clothing. As is yellow, the pigment of the

cell where highly radioactive shards of the cladding from Trawsfynydd’s uranium pellets are robotically sorted (plate 40). Like toxic aquaria, these tanks are a world apart in our world, sites in our midst that were created to supply our needs and yet imperil our survival. The nuclear contaminants behind the thick, leaded, radiation-shielding glass are as close to the observer as the display in a shop window but must remain as far removed as the mind can imagine. Alongside the uranium casings and other radioactive objects in Dounreay’s irradiated fuel caves (plate 9) sits a vacuum cleaner, the most everyday of objects, exiled from its quotidian function and cast into the endless twilight of this orange dungeon.

The modernist critic Clement Greenberg used the term “colour field”20 to describe the abstract expressionist paintings by Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman and Clyfford Still; colour-saturated canvases which were imbued with a quasi-religiosity. Newman believed that rather than merely representing or imitating the sublime, art could embody it21. Contemporaneous with this new anthropic sublime, the skies were being lit up with atomic colour fields as the world dawned with a new age of nuclear power that had no reference to homo sapiens’ history. Moving beyond modernism to postmodernism, the French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard regarded the sublime as an experience that challenges the limits of our comprehension and representation22, a sublime more suited to a bewilderingly technological world lacking the comfort of grand narratives.

1

The construction of a third nuclear power station, Sizewell C, is due to commence in 2024.

2

Water slows light to 75% of its normal speed in a vacuum.

3

Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), Part II, Sections I-II; ed. Adam Phillips (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1990) 53-4. Cited in Simon Morley (ed) The Sublime (Whitechapel Gallery/ MIT Press, Cambridge, 2010) p.15.

4

William Wordsworth, The Prelude or, Growth of a Poet’s Mind, 1850.

5

Immanuel Kant Critique of Pure Reason (1790); trans. J.J. Meredith (Oxford University Press, Oxford,) p.106. Cited Morley. Ibid. p.16.

6

Gen. Leslie Groves. “Top Secret Memorandum for the Secretary of War”, p. 381, in H. Feis, Between War and Peace: The Potsdam Conference (Princeton University Press, 1960) cited in David E. Nye American Technological Sublime (MIT Press, Cambridge, 1996) p. 227.

7

Lawrence Wright, In the New World: Growing Up with America, 1960–1984 (Knopf, New York, 1988), p. 35. Cited in Nye, Ibid, pp. 233/234.

8

United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

9

When the Queen visited the Harwell Atomic Energy Research Establishment in 1957, she was handed a small piece of plutonium in a bag. Reportedly, it felt warm.

10 One of the reactor piles caught fire and burned for three days. No one was evacuated but milk from the surrounding 190 square miles was destroyed for the next month.

The UK government censored reports and played down the issue.

11 The botanist Anna Atkins, a friend of Sir John Herschel, self-published Photograms of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions in 1843, the world’s first photographic book. Women were largely excluded from working in the “natural sciences” in that era, although botany was an exception. Recent research by Rose Teaney, doctoral student, De Montfort University, has uncovered the work into photosensitive chemistry by Elizabeth Fulhame and Mary Somerville which preceded the public announcements of the invention of photography by Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre and William Henry Fox Talbot in 1839.

12 William Henry Fox Talbot, Sun Pictures in Scotland. London, 1845.

13 Michael Collins, Record Pictures. Photographs from the Archives of the Institution of Civil Engineers. (SteidlMack, London, 2004).

14 Hilla Becher in conversation with James Lingwood. The Music of the Blast Furnaces in Art Press 209, January 1996 pp. 21–28. Cited in Susanne Lange (ed) Bernd and Hilla Becher. Life and Work (MIT Press, Cambridge, 2007) p. 195 15 As Pliny the Elder recorded in Historia Naturalis, in the 5th century BC, Zeuxis and Parrhasius held a contest to see which of the two was the greater painter. Zeuxis painted a bunch of grapes so convincingly that some birds attempted to peck them, but Parrhasius painted such a life-like curtain over his painting that Zeuxis tried to draw it to see what lay underneath.

16 Susan Tallman, Cubism and the Trompe l’Oeil Tradition, New York Review of Books, 19th January 2023, reviewing an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, October 20, 2022–January 22, 2023.

17 Susan Tallman, Ibid.

18 William Molyneux, letter to John Locke, 7th July 1688.

19 In 1728, the surgeon William Cheselden successfully removed the cataracts of Daniel Dolins, a man who had been functionally blind since birth. Testing Molyneux’s Problem on him, Cheselden found that Dolins “knew not the shape of anything, nor any one thing from another”, seemingly proving the empiricists’ case. However, the validity of Cheselden’s experiment is doubtful; Dolins’ vision was still in the early stages of recovery, and it never improved sufficiently for him to be able to read. In 2007, when Molyneux’s Problem was tested on Indian cataract patients who were blind from birth, initially only half could visually recognise the objects they had just handled, but a week later the patients’ success rate was much greater. While this proves that the brain does develop an ability to make connections between the senses, strictly speaking it validated the empiricists’ argument, as the brain requires time to adapt. Molyneux’s criterion – the ability for the blind person to immediately see clearly – is medically impossible, so his question remains philosophical.

20 Clement Greenberg, ”American-Type Painting”, Partisan Review, Spring 1955, pp. 179–96.

21 In his manifesto “The Sublime is Now”, Barnett Newman declared: “Instead of making cathedrals out of Christ, man, or ‘life’, we are making them out of ourselves, out of our own feelings. The image we produce is the self-evident one of revelation, real and concrete, that can be understood by anyone who will look at it without the nostalgic glasses of history.” Barnett Newman, “The Sublime is Now”, Tiger’s Eye (December 1948); reprinted in Barnett Newman: Selected Writings and Interviews, ed. John P. O’Neill (University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1992) 171–3.

22 Jean-François Lyotard, L’inhumain: Causeries sur le temps (Éditions Galilée, Paris, 1988): trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby, The Inhuman: Reflections on Time (Polity Press, Cambridge, 1991) 89 – 107. First published in Artforum (April, 1984).

Inside the Dounreay Fast Reactor sphere on the reactor floor, No 1, 2023 In the foreground is one of the giant legs of the circular Goliath crane, which was used to lift the flasks into position to enable the withdrawal and insertion of the uranium fuel rods.

Inside the Dounreay Prototype Fast Reactor sphere on the reactor floor, No 2, 2023 Undergoing decommissioning. In the foreground is one of the giant legs of the circular Goliath crane.

South wall of the Irradiated Fuel Cave, Dounreay Prototype Fast Reactor, 2023 The yellow steel tubes are adaptor lifting yokes (ALY) which are bolted to the valves below and are used to lift the adaptor valve assemblies and place them on the reactor. The grey wall boxes on the cave wall supply power, instrumentation and gas feeds into the irradiated fuel cave.

Redundant controls, Dounreay Fast Reactor sphere airlock, 2023 The airlock leads into the 42-metre steel sphere housing the Dounreay Fast Reactor.

Dounreay Prototype Fast Reactor Hall Below 14 Foot Floor Facing West, 2023 The grey mass in the epicentre of the background is the reactor rotating shield. In the foreground (including one partially hidden by a vertical beam) are the intermediate heat exchangers.

Oxygen Analyser and X-Ray Machine, Irradiated Fuel Cave, Dounreay Prototype Fast Reactor, 2023 The equipment in the upper half of the photograph is an oxygen analyser and sampler pump, used for monitoring irradiated fuel cell conditions. The irradiated fuel cell has a nitrogen gas atmosphere with analyser/samplers located at numerous locations to ensure oxygen levels remain at acceptable limits.

The blue control panel (lower half of the photograph) is the X-Ray equipment for the Prototype Fast Reactor’s irradiated fuel cave. The panel controlled the loading and positioning of X-Ray film plates for post-irradiated examination of fuel sub-assemblies.

Overleaf: Detail of Oxygen Analyser from Oxygen Analyser and X-Ray Machine, Irradiated Fuel Cave, Dounreay Prototype Fast Reactor, 2023

Although the conditions didn’t necessitate wearing respirators, and we were following stringent didn’t necessitate wearing didn’t necessitate wearing safety

Dounreay Prototype Fast Reactor Mortuary Control Panel, 2023 Gauge panel showing gas supply pressures and distribution for all the “mortuary” storage positions for ex-reactor components. Originally argon gas, now replaced with nitrogen, this ensured an inert atmosphere for any item removed from the reactor to prevent oxidisation/fire from sodium on the component. Purging removed active gas to a high active filtered gas vent route, replacing it with nonactive clean argon/nitrogen.

Overleaf left: Window No 10, Irradiated Fuel Cave, Dounreay Prototype Fast Reactor, 2023 Foreground shows manipulators and lathe ready for operational control.

Overleaf right: Window No 6, Irradiated Fuel Cave, Dounreay Prototype Fast Reactor, 2023 Dry Storage Tank array with hand manipulator and power manipulator arm in upper foreground. Waste crate and in-cell Henry vacuum cleaner in background at bench level.

The orange/yellow colour in the cave is an effect caused by sodium lamps. The irradiated fuel cave windows consist of six pieces of clear glass; 4 x 250 mm, 1 x 200 mm, 1 x120 mm. These were installed as a pack/assembly in the late 1980s to replace the zinc bromide-filled tank windows. The zinc bromide tank system was notoriously difficult to keep sealed. The corrosive nature of zinc bromide attacked all forms of gasket materials and radiation levels/temperature gradients, causing it to go cloudy and darken in colour, making visibility difficult in the cell.

Within the cave, a further two pieces of glass protect this now solid pack window assembly. A 125 mm-thick removable attenuation glass sits on support pads; behind this, with a 25 mm gap separating them, is the 35 mm-thick alpha seal/ crash barrier. The inner attenuation glass slab can be lifted using in-cell handling to allow the cleaning of sodium aerosol dust from the inner face of the alpha seal/crash barrier glass. This was carried out in the early 2000s to restore visibility into the cave after some 25 years of sodium aerosol collection between the two hot-side glass layers.

Radioactive Waste Container, Sellafield, 2021 Sellafield, formerly known as Windscale, is Europe’s largest nuclear site. It generated nuclear power from 1956 to 2003, and reprocessed nuclear fuel from 1952 to 2022.

Intermediate Level Radioactive Waste “Product” Store, Sellafield, 2021 Still under construction, this reinforced warehouse will hold concrete and metal cubes containing intermediate level radioactive waste. Once full, it will be sealed.

Pond, Chapelcross, 2022 Chapelcross was operational from 1959 to 2004. It is the sister plant to Calder Hall in Cumbria (Sellafield). Chapelcross had four Magnox reactors.

The pond is used as interim storage for spent nuclear fuel used in the reactors. The water in the pond cools the spent nuclear fuel and provides a shield from the radiation.

Emptied Pond, Chapelcross, 2022

Inside Emptied Pond, Chapelcross, 2022

Detail Inside Emptied Pond, Chapelcross, 2022

Overleaf left: Waste Skip (new), Chapelcross, 2022 Overleaf right: Waste Skip (old), Chapelcross, 2022

Intermediate Level Waste Storage Facility, Chapelcross, 2022

Overleaf left: Uranium, Chapelcross, No 1, 2022 Overleaf right: Uranium, Chapelcross, No 2, 2022

Although the conditions didn’t necessitate wearing respirators, and we were following stringent didn’t necessitate wearing didn’t necessitate wearing safety

Turbine Hall, Chapelcross, No 1, 2022 The turbine hall at Chapelcross contained eight turbines, each painted an individual colour and manufactured by CA Parsons & Co. It is contemporaneous with the turbine hall at Calder Hall.

Overleaf left: Turbine Hall, Chapelcross, No 2, 2022 Overleaf right: Turbine Hall, Chapelcross, No 3, 2022 Following pages: Detail of the Turbine Hall, Chapelcross, No 1, 2022

Although the conditions didn’t necessitate wearing respirators, and we were following stringent didn’t necessitate wearing didn’t necessitate wearing safety

Over leaf Although the conditions didn’t necessitate wearing respirators, and we were following stringent didn’t necessitate wearing didn’t necessitate wearing safety

Mortuary Holes B78, Dragon Reactor, Winfrith, No 1, 2023 The purpose of the experimental high-temperature gas-cooled Dragon reactor was to test fuel and materials for the European High Temperature Reactor programme. It operated from 1965 to 1976.

These mortuary holes were used to store cooled, spent fuel from the Dragon reactor. The fuel was uranium oxide; it stayed in the mortuary holes for approximately 25 years. When the rods were first placed here, the covers were painted red; only as the radiation diminished were they painted green. The fuel was transferred to Harwell in 2005.

Mortuary Holes B78, Dragon Reactor, Winfrith, No 3, 2023

Overleaf left: Mortuary Holes B78, Dragon Reactor, Winfrith, No 4, 2023 Overleaf right: Mortuary Holes B78, Dragon Reactor, Winfrith, No 5, 2023

Although the conditions didn’t necessitate wearing respirators, and we were following stringent didn’t necessitate wearing didn’t necessitate wearing safety

Master Slave Manipulator, Dragon Reactor, Winfrith, 2023 The window on the left shows the slave end of the manipulator; the right window shows a fuel spike box with a fuel spike protruding from the box. The Master Slave Manipulator (MSM) is being used for packing fuel spikes and handling radioactive material for analysis.

Overleaf: Detail of Master Slave Manipulator, Dragon Reactor, Winfrith, 2023

Although the conditions didn’t necessitate wearing respirators, and we were following stringent didn’t necessitate wearing didn’t necessitate wearing safety

Lobby to Reactor 2, Dungeness A, 2022 Dungeness A is a Magnox power station. It had two nuclear reactors and was operational between 1965 and 2006.

Obsolete Master Slave Manipulator, Reactor 2, Dungeness A, 2022

Control Room, Reactor 2, Dungeness A, 2022

Control Room (corner), Reactor 2, Dungeness A, 2022

Pile Cap Crane Control Room, Reactor 2, Dungeness A, 2022 Situated adjacent to the pile cap, which would be visible through the protective window.

The remote-controlled crane used for inserting and withdrawing fuel rods from the reactor was operated from here.

Pile Cap and Crane, Reactor 2, Dungeness A, 2022 The foreground shows the covers to the apertures where the remote-controlled crane (white, in background) inserted and withdrew uranium fuel rods from the reactor.

Pile Cap Detail, Reactor 2, Dungeness A, No 2, 2022

Pile Cap Detail, Reactor 2, Dungeness A, No 1, 2022

Overleaf: Detail of Pile Cap Detail, Reactor 2, Dungeness A, No 1, 2022

Although the conditions didn’t necessitate wearing respirators, and we were following stringent didn’t necessitate wearing didn’t necessitate wearing safety

Shield Door, Intermediate Level Waste Store Package Inspection Cell, Trawsfynydd, 2021 Trawsfynydd is a Magnox power station designed by architect Basil Spence. It had two nuclear reactors and was operational between 1965 and 1991.

The Intermediate Level Waste (ILW) Store Package Inspection Cell is used to shield operational personnel from elevated radiation during ILW package inspections.

Intermediate Level Waste Store Inspection Cell Turntable, Trawsfynydd, 2021 The Intermediate Level Waste (ILW) Store Package Inspection Cell turntable, where ILW packages are periodically inspected for integrity to support safe long-term storage.

North Fuel Element Debris Retrieval Plant Sort Cell Window and Manipulators, Trawsfynydd, 2021 This is used to shield operational personnel from elevated radiation and contamination during Intermediate Level Waste retrieval and processing.

North Fuel Element Debris Retrieval Plant Sort Cell Waste Transfer Tray, Trawsfynydd, 2021 This is used to transfer Intermediate Level Waste (ILW) from the Fuel Element Debris (FED) cells for radiological assay and weighing prior to placement within an ILW package.

Intermediate Level Waste Store, concrete overpack, No 1, Trawsfynydd, 2021 The Intermediate Level Waste (ILW) Store concrete overpack contains ILW packages in storage. These concrete overpacks are used to shield operational personnel from elevated radiation during operations within the ILW store and during cross-site transport between plant areas within the Trawsfynydd Nuclear Power Station site.

Overleaf left: Intermediate Level Waste Store, concrete overpack, No 2, Trawsfynydd, 2021 Overleaf right: Intermediate Level Waste Store, concrete overpack, No 3, Trawsfynydd, 2021

Pile Cap, Reactor 2, Trawsfynydd, 2021 This is where the uranium fuel rods were loaded into the reactor.

Turbine Hall Gauge Board, Sizewell A, No 1, 2022 Sizewell A had two Magnox reactors and was operational from 1965 to 2006. Photograph shows cooling water system control panel. This control panel operated the cooling water system, which was used to cool the turbine condenser, turning the steam back into water.

Overleaf left: Diesel Generator control panel, Main Control Room, Sizewell A, No 1, 2022 Overleaf right: Diesel Generator control panel, Main Control Room, Sizewell A, No 2, 2022 The diesel generators were used to provide emergency electrical power to the plant in the event of a loss of electrical supplies.

Following page left: 132kV Grid Supply control panel, Main Control Room, Sizewell A, No 1, 2022 Following page right: 132kV Grid Supply control panel, Main Control Room, Sizewell A, No 2, 2022 The 132kV grid distributed and supplied electrical power for the nuclear power station.

Although the conditions didn’t necessitate wearing respirators, and we were following stringent didn’t necessitate wearing didn’t necessitate wearing safety

Pile Cap Crane Control No 1 A, Sizewell A, 2022 The glass-walled control room overlooks the pile cap. This console operated the remote-controlled crane used for inserting and withdrawing uranium fuel rods from the reactor.

Control Panel, Pile Cap Crane Control No 1 A, Sizewell A, 2022 The framed diagram (top left, partially cropped) shows the layout of the pile cap apertures which would house the uranium fuel rods. The joystick was used to manoeuvre the crane carrying these rods.

Overleaf: Detail of Control Panel, Pile Cap Crane Control No 1 A, Sizewell A, 2022

Pile Cap, Sizewell A, 2022 This houses the nuclear fuel and other reactor components.

Pile Cap Detail, Sizewell A, No 1, 2022 This is where the uranium fuel rods would be loaded into the reactor.

Pile Cap Detail, Sizewell A, No 2, 2022

Overleaf left: Pile Cap Detail, Sizewell A, No 3, 2022 Overleaf right: Pile Cap Detail, Sizewell A, No 4, 2022

Pile Cap, Reactor 1, Wylfa, 2021 Wylfa had two Magnox reactors and was operational from 1971 to 2015.

This is where the uranium fuel rods would be loaded into the reactor.

Gas Circulator, Advanced GasCooled Reactor, Torness, 2023 Torness, which became operational in 1988, has two Advanced GasCooled Reactors (AGR). Each reactor has eight associated gas circulators which pump the high-pressure carbon dioxide coolant gas to the underside of the graphite core and up the fuel channels where the gas picks up heat generated by the nuclear reaction in the fuel. The gas passes through to the top of the boiler and then down to the gas circulator. As the hot gas passes through, its heat is transferred to the water in the boiler, forming superheated steam at high pressure, which drives the turbine.

Pile Cap, Reactor 1, Torness, 2023 Torness’s pile cap floor is made up of individual interlocking bricks to provide shielding to protect the reactor standpipes. The control and instrumentation panels are on the wall.

Pile Cap Detail, Reactor 1, Torness, No 1, 2023 Below these interlocking bricks are the reactor standpipes. This is the primary coolant system responsible for circulating water through the reactor core to draw off the heat generated by the nuclear fission reactions.

Pile Cap Detail, Reactor 1, Torness, No 2, 2023

Overleaf left: Pile Cap Detail, Reactor 1, Torness No 3, 2023 Overleaf right: Pile Cap Detail, Reactor 1, Torness, No 4, 2023

Control Panel, Torness, No 1, 2023

Control Panel, Torness, No 2, 2023

Reactor Head, Sizewell B, 2023 Sizewell B is the UK’s only commercial pressurised water reactor (PWR). Its single reactor became operational in 1995. The photograph shows the reactor head on its park stand in the containment building, having been removed from the reactor vessel during refuelling. Approximately every 18 months, the reactor is closed down for maintenance and refuelling, a process known as “outage”.

Refuelling cavity, Reactor, Sizewell B, No 2, 2023 The reactor’s refuelling cavity is filled with borated water, which controls the nuclear chain reaction. All defuelling and refuelling activities take place fully submerged under borated water.

The blue colour of the water is created by Cherenkov radiation. This is a type of electromagnetic radiation that occurs when a charged particle passes through a dielectric medium (such as water) at a speed greater than the phase velocity of light in that medium.

The electromagnetic disturbance causes a shock wave of distinctive blue light.

Overleaf: Detail of Refuelling cavity, Reactor, Sizewell B, No 2, 2023

Interior of In-Vessel Training Facility of JET Fusion Reactor, No 1, 2022 A fusion reactor uses magnetic confinement to create and control high-temperature plasma for nuclear fusion. Known as a “Tokamak”, it derives from the Russian acronym which translates to “toroidal chamber with magnetic coils” (it was developed in the Soviet Union in the 1950s). The Tokamak has a beigelshaped chamber where the plasma is confined and heated to extremely high temperatures.

The In-Vessel Training Facility is made up of the spare octant created for JET, which was never used, with mock-up segments to create a lifelike replica to practise remote maintenance techniques.

The experimental Joint European Torus (JET) is a fusion research centre which became operational in 1983.

Its research led to the development of ITER, the world’s first commercialscale fusion machine, which is being built in France as an international collaboration.

Interior of In-Vessel Training Facility of JET Fusion Reactor, No 2, 2022

Exterior of JET Fusion Reactor, No 1, 2022 Outer workings of the JET torus.

Gamma Collimator, JET Fusion Reactor, No 2, 2022 Located on the outer workings of the JET torus, the gamma collimator measures the gamma-ray radiation emitted during the fusion process.

High Temperature Superconducting Magnets Cryogenic Test Rig, Tokamak Energy, 2023 The cryogenic test rig was used to develop the high-temperature superconducting magnets for fusion and other applications.

Overleaf left: High Field Spherical Tokamak, Tokamak Energy, 2023 The Tokamak Energy ST40 is a high field spherical Tokamak with a major radius of 40 cm. Built in 2017, it is equipped with copper magnets and heated using two co-current neutral beam injectors. In 2022, it achieved plasma temperatures greater than 100 million degrees Celsius, six times hotter than sun and the threshold for commercial fusion.

Overleaf right: Divertor Coil Feeds, High Field Spherical Tokamak, Tokamak Energy, 2023 The cables in the foreground are the ST40 divertor coil feeds. They feed the current, up to 17,000 amps, to the divertor coils to change the magnetic configuration and increase plasma performance. A divertor is a device within a Tokamak which allows the online removal of waste material from the plasma while the reactor is still operating.

Manifolds and Valve Control Systems, Cryoplant, International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, 2022 ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) is an international collaboration to build the world’s largest, most powerful, magnetic fusion device (or Tokamak).

Its objective is to demonstrate the feasibility of nuclear fusion as a practical and sustainable energy source. Once constructed, its Tokamak chamber will be approximately 30 metres in diameter.

The photograph shows a set of manifolds and valve control systems associated with the Tokamak’s cryoplant.

Vacuum Vessel Module in the Tokamak Assembly Pit, International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, No 1, 2022 The Tokamak chamber is constructed in segments. Each segment is supported by a temporary “radial” beam attached to both the central column and bioshield wall.

Vacuum Vessel Module in the Tokamak Assembly Pit, International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, No 2, 2022 The first of the nine vacuum vessel segments in the Tokamak assembly pit.

Interior of Vacuum Vessel Module in the Tokamak AssemblyPit, International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, 2022 The protruding structures that dot the inner wall of the vacuum vessel sector are housings for the flexible supports that will be used to anchor the protective blanket shield blocks.

Overleaf: Detail of Interior of Vacuum Vessel Module in the Tokamak Assembly Pit, International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, 2022

Module for Central Solenoid, International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, 2022 One of the six modules which, once stacked and assembled, will form the Tokamak’s 1,000-tonne central solenoid. This solenoid will be the most powerful magnet in the world.

Silver-plated Thermal Shield Panel, International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, 2022 A silver-plated thermal shield panel being prepared for assembly. The thermal shield will form a protective shell around the vacuum vessel.

1

Inside the Dounreay Prototype Fast Reactor sphere on the reactor floor, No 1, 2023

29 Lobby to Reactor 2, Dungeness A, 2022

2

Inside the Dounreay Prototype Fast Reactor sphere on the reactor floor, No 2, 2023

30 Obsolete Master Slave Manipulator, Reactor 2, Dungeness A, 2022

3

South wall of the Irradiated Fuel Cave, Dounreay Prototype Fast Reactor, 2023

31 Control Room, Reactor 2, Dungeness A, 2022

4

Redundant controls, Dounreay Fast Reactor sphere airlock, 2023

32 Control Room (corner), Reactor 2, Dungeness A, 2022

5

Dounreay Prototype Fast Reactor Hall Below 14 Foot Floor Facing West, 2023

33 Pile Cap Crane Control Room, Reactor 2, Dungeness A, 2022

6

Oxygen Analyser and X-Ray Machine, Irradiated Fuel Cave, Dounreay Prototype Fast Reactor, 2023

34 Pile Cap and Crane, Reactor 2, Dungeness A, 2022

7

Dounreay Prototype Fast Reactor Mortuary Control Panel, 2023

8

Window No 10, Irradiated Fuel Cave, Dounreay Prototype Fast Reactor, 2023

9

Window No 6, Irradiated Fuel Cave, Dounreay Prototype Fast Reactor, 2023

35 Pile Cap Detail, Reactor 2, Dungeness A, No 2, 2022 36 Pile Cap Detail, Reactor 2, Dungeness A, No 1, 2022 37 Shield Door, Intermediate Level Waste Store Package Inspection Cell, Trawsfynydd, 2021

10 Radioactive Waste Container, Sellafield, 2021

38 Intermediate Level Waste Store Inspection Turntable, Trawsfynydd, 2021

11 Intermediate Level Radioactive Waste “Product” Store, Sellafield, 2021

39 North Fuel Element Debris Retrieval Plant Sort Cell Window and Manipulators, Trawsfynydd, 2021

12 Pond, Chapelcross, 2022 13 Emptied Pond, Chapelcross, 2022

40 North Fuel Element Debris Retrieval Plant Sort Cell Waste Transfer Tray, Trawsfynydd, 2021

14 Inside Emptied Pond, Chapelcross, 2022

41 Intermediate Level Waste Store, concrete overpack, No 1, Trawsfynydd, 2021

15 Detail Inside Emptied Pond, Chapelcross, 2022

42 Intermediate Level Waste Store, concrete overpack, No 2, Trawsfynydd, 2021

16 Uranium , Chapelcross No 1, 2022

43 Intermediate Level Waste Store, concrete overpack, No 3, Trawsfynydd, 2021

17 Uranium , Chapelcross No 2, 2022

44 Pile Cap, Reactor 2, Trawsfynydd, 2021

18 Waste store , Chapelcross, 2022

45 Turbine Hall Gauge board, Sizewell A, No 1, 2022

19 Waste Skip (new), Chapelcross, 2022

46 Diesel Generator control panel, Main Control Room, Sizewell A, No 1, 2022

20 Waste Skip (old), Chapelcross, 2022

47 Diesel Generator control panel, Main Control Room, Sizewell A, No 2, 2022

21 Turbine Hall, Chapelcross, No 1, 2022

48 132kV Grid Supply control panel, Main Control Room, Sizewell A, No 1, 2022

22 Turbine Hall, Chapelcross, No 2, 2022

49 132kV Grid Supply control panel, Main Control Room, Sizewell A, No 2, 2022

23 Turbine Hall, Chapelcross, No 3, 2022

50 Pile Cap Crane Control No 1 A, Sizewell A, 2022

24 Mortuary Holes B78, Dragon Reactor, Winfrith, No 1, 2023

51 Control Panel, Pile Cap Crane Control No 1 A, Sizewell A, 2022

25 Mortuary Holes B78, Dragon Reactor, Winfrith, No 2, 2023

52 Pile Cap, Sizewell A, 2022

26 Mortuary Holes B78, Dragon Reactor, Winfrith, No 3, 2023

53 Pile Cap Detail, Sizewell A, No 1, 2022

27 Mortuary Holes B78, Dragon Reactor, Winfrith, No 4, 2023

54 Pile Cap Detail, Sizewell A, No 2, 2022

28 Master Slave Manipulator, Dragon Reactor, Winfrith, 2023

55 Pile Cap Detail, Sizewell A, No 3, 2022

56 Pile Cap Detail, Sizewell A, No 4, 2022 57 Pile Cap, Reactor 1, Wylfa, 2021 58 Gas Circulator, Advanced Gas-Cooled Reactor, Torness, 2023 59 Pile Cap, Reactor 1, Torness, 2023 60 Pile Cap Detail, Reactor 1, Torness, No 1, 2023 61 Pile Cap Detail, Reactor 1, Torness, No 2, 2023 62 Pile Cap Detail, Reactor 1, Torness, No 3, 2023 63 Pile Cap Detail, Reactor 1, Torness, No 4, 2023 64 Control Panel, Torness, No 1, 2023 65 Control Panel, Torness, No 2, 2023 66 Reactor Head, Sizewell B, 2023 67 Refuelling Cavity, Reactor, Sizewell B, No 1, 2023 68 Interior of In-Vessel Training Facility of JET Fusion Reactor, No 1, 2022 69 Interior of In-Vessel Training Facility of JET Fusion Reactor, No 2, 2022 70 Exterior of JET Fusion Reactor, No 1, 2022 71 Gamma Collimator, JET Fusion Reactor, No 2, 2022 72 High Temperature Superconducting Magnets Cryogenic Test Rig, Tokamak Energy, 2023 73 High Field Spherical Tokamak, Tokamak Energy, 2023 74 Divertor Coil Feeds, High Field Spherical Tokamak, Tokamak Energy, 2023 75 Manifolds and Valve Control Systems, Cryoplant, International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, 2022 76 Vacuum Vessel Module in the Tokamak Assembly Pit, International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, No 1, 2022 77 Vacuum Vessel Module in the Tokamak Assembly Pit, International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, No 2, 2022 78 Interior of Vacuum Vessel Module in the Tokamak Assembly Pit, International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, 2022 79 Module for Central Solenoid, International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, 2022 80 Silver-plated Thermal Shield Panel, International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, 2022

First published in the UK in 2024 by RRB Photobooks All rights reserved Essay and contemporary photographs copyright © 2024 Michael Collins www.recordpictures.com ISBN 978-1-7397023-8-0 Design: Richard Krzyzak Photography post-production: Ryan Harding Copy editor: Digby Hildreth Sub editor: Simon Aldous Editor: Michael Collins Printed and bound in Wales by Gomer Press Limited This photography and book would not have been possible without the assistance of a large number of people, and I am very grateful to them all for their contributions. That I was allowed to visit such a range of nuclear energy sites to make my own photography without any editorial control whatsoever is commendable.

Foremost, I would like to thank David Peattie, CEO of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority; Dr Tim Stone, chair of the Nuclear Industry Association; and Rachael Glaving, commercial director of generation, EDF, for their unconditional support, without which this photography would not have been possible.

I would also like to thank Celestine Cheong, Kelly Lea and Shauna Ward at the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority; Stuart White at Tokamak Energy; and Laban Coblentz, Robert Arnoux and Yoann Santanaria at International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor.

Robert Gunn and his colleague Gavin Hails at Sizewell B were particularly helpful, as were Paul Forrest and Ashleigh Dickson at Torness, along with their colleagues at EDF: Marjorie Barnes, Olivia Hallewell, Karen Heather and Michelle Renwick.

At the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, I would like to acknowledge the assistance of the following: Donna Banning, Jill Callander, Ben Chilton, Gillian Elliott, Daniel Gould, James Gunn, Bill Hamilton, Michelle Humphreys, Mair Jones, Lucy Mackay, Sean Marshall, John McNamara, Simon Napper, Laura Mitchell, Angharad Rayner, Gwen Parry-Jones, Kirsty Ramsden, Gordon Reid, Tony Smith, Delia Taylor, Paul Vallance, Eirian Vaughan-Lewis, David Wallace, Tim Williams and Tina Wright.

My thanks, too, to Jonathan Ford, great company on long road trips to various nuclear power stations, and to Emma Bowkett and Liz Jobey, who helped initiate this photography. And to Eric Almquist, Oliver Bennett, Steve Boxer, Marie-Laure Davenport, Jim and Jacquie Dow, Andrew Gardener and Joey Sharpe, Roger Leverdier, Simon Bedford-Roberts, Rachel Roffe, David Spero, Shellburne Thurber and Simon Aldous, who were all very helpful in their own ways.

I would also like to express my gratitude to Howard Ricketts and John Falconer for their pivotal support.

Lastly, my profound thanks to Richard Krzyzak for his excellent design, Ryan Harding for his superb post-production work and Digby Hildreth for his astute copy editing, and to Rudi Thoemmes and Josie Atkinson at RRB Photobooks for their belief in this book, and to Pit Dafis at Gomer Press Limited for his resolute assistance.