Letter David Lowry: The Western Mail’s report on the closure of Wales’ last nuclear power plant, at Wylfa on Anglesey, marks an important moment in Welsh industrial history. Wylfa Site Director Stuart Law is reported as saying the closure marks a “safe and dignified end to the generation of electricity at Wylfa” and that the main focus for the coming months is to prepare staff and the site for defuelling the Magnox reactors, originally ordered by the now defunct nationalised power generator, the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) in the late 1960s. But the account of the 44 years of operating life of the reactor omits one important aspect: the production of plutonium for use in nuclear warheads, both in Britain and the US. This was first revealed in an exclusive Western Mail front page story by your then political editor, Sarah Neville, on October 8, 1984. It was followed in more detail by former Labour MP for Blaenau Gwent, Llew Smith – for whom I used to do research – in a feature article in the Western Mail on March 3, 1986, followed by a letter in the paper from Mr Smith (“Safety problems at Wylfa Nuclear plant”, December 11, 1995). Mr Smith cited an interview I conducted on January 19, 1983, with the late Lord Hinton, the first chairman of the CEGB, in which he said to me: “Wylfa is a long and sad story. It ought not to have been built at all, but when I suggested this to the Permanent Secretary [at what is now the Department of Energy and Climate Change] he said you have got to build it in order to meet the government programme.”
Western Mail 4 January 2016 read more »