nuclear tourism

You can see Sizewell nuclear power station from the door of 'The Under the pier show'. The rectangular building is the old Magnox reactor, no longer producing power, and the dome is Sizewell B, a pressurised water reactor. Sizewell A used to have open days. I really enjoyed going round it. The enthusiasm of the engineers who worked there was obvious. I was amazed by their white boiler suits, obviously intended to show the cleanliness of nuclear energy. Sizewell B was built in the late 1980s (Mrs Thatcher was a great fan of nuclear power). It ran hugely over budget and remains the only PWR in the UK. It was a sad end to the 1950s idealism for nuclear power, with 'electricity too cheap to meter'.

Its obvious that my arcade needs a coin operated nuclear reactor, but what really got me started was a wonderful trip to Los Alamos with some friends a few years ago.		The Los Alamos surplus store run by Atomic Ed, who died last year.

Los Alamos bookshop. The labs are the main employer in town, so the books are amazing. I was at first surprised by the number of books on conventional 'explosives', but they 'compress' the atomic material to trigger the nuclear explosion.		At the labs museum with a mirv. I never knew atomic warheads looked like oversized road cones.

Nuclear souvenirs. The Nuclear Electric packet of mints come from Sizewell B. The stone is Trinitite, glassified sand from the Trinity bomb (the first nuclear test). The leather pouch is a nail clipper from TEPCO, the japanese nuclear power authority.		Some of the illuminated pushbuttons I got from Atomic Ed's surplus store.