Atomic Achievement (1956)

Here's a very British film about atomic energy. Made in 1956 to promote breakthroughs in civil atomic energy at Calder Hall, Atomic Achievement is the epitome of those public information films that declared the atom is our friend.

It features Windscale, the two reactors, or piles, which produced the first British weapons grade plutonium-239. A dangerous fire at the plant in 1957, a year after this film was made, would sully forever the pristine technocratic reputation of the site, and by the 80s it had been renamed Sellafield.

The main focus of the film is Windscale's near neighbour, Calder Hall, home to Britains's first magnox reactor, built for the production of domestic power rather than atomic weaponry. Perhaps the most disturbing moment of the film is watching the not-very-radiation-suited men turning the spent fuel rods in a cooling pool like sausages on a barbecue. Watching this I could only hear Eric Clapton's doomy theme to the eighties BBC nuclear thriller Edge of Darkness. A fascinating film, and one that unsettles while thinking it comforts.