Calder Hall and British-American nuclear diplomacy

HM Elizabeth II delivering an opening speech at Calder Hall in 1956

On 17 October 1956, Queen Elizabeth II opened Calder Hall, the world’s first commercial nuclear power station, at Sellafield, on the western coast of Cumbria. The two Windscale Piles preceded it in 1950 and ‘51. Both produced plutonium-239 for early British nuclear weapons.