'Nuclear prospects': the siting and construction of Sizewell A power station 1957-1966.

This paper examines the siting and construction of a Magnox nuclear power station on the Suffolk coast. The station was initially welcomed by local politicians as a solution to unemployment but was criticised by an organised group of local Communist activists who predicted how the restriction zone would restrict future development. Oral history interviews provide insights into conditions on the construction site and the social effects on the nearby town. Archive material reveals the spatial and development restrictions imposed with the building of the power station, which remains on the shoreline as a monument to the 'atomic age'. This material is contextualised in the longer economic and social history of a town that moved from the shadow of nineteenth century paternalistic industry into the glare of the nuclear construction programme and became an early example of the eclipsing of local democracy by the centralised nuclear state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]