This year's Grand Day Out took the Happy Hippy to Dungeness, Kent,
home of the Dungeness Lighthouse, Derek Jarman's now famous chalet garden
and the Dungeness nuclear power station.Situated in the south west of Kent, Dungeness isn't the most accessible of
places but it isn't the most inaccessible either.
It's well worth a visit.
Dungeness Lighthouse
The Dungeness lighthouse is fully operational but unfortunately not open to
the public except on rare occasions. It is also about half the height it used to be
when I went there as a child, although, its diminished status is probably due
to a distorted memory rather than any physical change in size.
Actually it was a bit of a disappointment even though it was in use due to the
rather poor visibility at that time.
The old lighthouse is open for viewing but held no particular appeal for me; I
would prefer to see the workings, no matter how mundane or clinical, of a
modern lighthouse than examine the well documented workings of the lighthouses
of times gone by.
Derek Jarman's Chalet Garden
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Much more interesting than the lighthouse was Derek Jarman's chalet garden;
it's the black chalet
with the yellow window frames; Prospect Cottage. It's not hard to spot it
on the road towards
the lighthouse being the most well presented, with the best kept garden, of
the chalets on the road.
Following Jarman's death, the chalet has become something of a shrine
after the release of a book, for charity, which explored the rather unique
garden of the equally unique writer and director.
The garden, or creation more correctly, is much more dynamic and interesting
in real life than anything I'd ever seen in print or on television.
Being mainly shingle, adorned with wild flowers and large drift wood posts it
is minimalistic and captivating. I couldn't call it beautiful and it will probably
not appeal to the normal turf and rose gardener. It is unusual, being
designed and cultivated by an unusual man, and worth the visit.
The property is privately owned and not open to the public, the notice
explaining as such is stuck to the front door of the chalet.
Having realised that the property was perhaps occupied; I had no desire to
walk all over another person's land and destroy their right to a peaceful and
quiet existence, it would have been better had requests for such been placed
on a small sign by the road.
Having compromised the owner's desire for privacy in order to find that they
had such a desire left me feeling more guilt than perhaps I should have.
It is a great shame that the chalet has not been purchased as a monument to
Derek Jarman and therefore more open to the public, however, that has not been
the case.
Perhaps in the future that may change.
Dungeness Nuclear Power Station
Dungeness has two nuclear power plants; Dungeness A and Dungeness
B.
As the labelling suggests; A was the original power station, built in
the 1960's, whilst B is the later, 1980's, addition.
Operated by Nuclear Electric plc there is a visitors centre open
during the summer ( contact them for full details ) which offers audio-visual
displays explaining nuclear power and there are guided tours around the
Dungeness A installation ( age and other restrictions apply ).
Both the visitors centre and tour are free of charge, so, having been less
than impressed by the size of the Dungeness lighthouse, having reflected upon
Jarman's gardening skills and having consumed vast quantities of bacon sarnies;
into the mouth of the nuclear monolith headed the Happy Hippy ...
The visitors centre is easy to locate and is a large prefab building with a
rough and ready car park adjacent to it.
Tours, which last between 45 and 90 minutes, must be booked with reception and
there can be a bit of a wait ( about an hour in my case ). You have to sign in
and supply a home address; whether you lie depends upon what you think they're
going to do with the information they collect.
If you are a potential Direct Action evangelist or an international
terrorist, you would probably want to lie; me, I'm intrigued to see what they're
going to send me - If I get a birthday card from BNFL or the UKAEA I'm going to
get seriously worried about what Big Brother actually knows.
The visitors centre offers a small number of audio-visual displays showing the
benefits of nuclear power and highlighting how safe the industry is and what
little waste it creates.
Interesting propaganda and not surprising. Playing the quiz machines is
pretty easy if you go for the, "Nuclear power is completely safe", "There is
almost no high-level radioactive waste produced", and the, "It is
environmentally friendly", options but some answers did actually surprise
even me; time to check on what the anti-nuclear viewpoint is on those matters
methinks.
The displays are limited in number and, with their interactive design, wouldn't
cope with large numbers of visitors. Two had stopped working when I was there
and another was so badly designed as to be unworkable.
The air conditioning in the centre had also failed; rather worrying considering
that reliability of a nuclear installation is the biggest concern of most
people. The visitors centre may not be an integral part of the power station
but it is part of the same organisation.
I skipped the tour's introductory film because the heat in the centre was so
unbearable ( it also seemed to be yet another rendition of the, "Nuclear Power
is Best", message ) but this provided the chance to grab paper and crayons in
the children's area to produce a suitably apocalyptic drawing of nuclear power
dangers which was still pined to the visitor centre wall when I later left.
The tour itself was interesting but not really informative; the usual banal
spiel, describing the building's functions and operations, accompanied our
wanderings. For someone who had never really thought about nuclear plants it
may have been interesting, and at the right level, but I would have preferred
a much more detailed technical explanation along the way.
Donning hard hats and ear defenders our guide led us into the installation
proper.
Although various age restrictions were made clear ( no under fives ), the
requirement for suitable footwear was enforced and the walking and climbing
involved in the tour was indicated on the notice board there was no
explanation on how hard hats should be properly adjusted and how the ear
defenders should be used or adjusted to work effectively.
The fact that the main entry gate would be locked in the event of an emergency
was explained but nothing was said about how the muster points we were to go
to in such an emergency were to be identified, indeed,
how to recognise an emergency and what to do if such occurred, was completely
missing.
That the, "Don't touch anything", warning was notably lacking didn't inspire
confidence.
The tour took us through the main site of the installation, into the generator
turbine rooms and into the control centre itself. The areas where radioactivity,
even in small doses, was present were out-of-bounds for the tour and there's no
way anyone's going into an actual reactor !
The most striking thing about the turbine room was the antiquated equipment in
use; most of it was installed around the mid 1960's.
Whilst the turbine and associated equipment was obviously, I hope, in good
working order it was a little disconcerting to find information, obviously
important for safe operation, scrawled on cabinets in felt-tip pen beneath
panel meters and the correct settings for switches marked with big
hand-drawn arrows and crosses.
The cardboard defect tags attached to various pieces of, on-line,
equipment did attract my attention and it did cross my mind, what would happen
were I to pull off such tags or start shifting levers, moving dials whilst
turning keys and throwing them into the abyss below the gantry ?
Access to the control room depends upon the controller's agreement; I'm sure
they don't want a party of visitors seeing what goes on, interfering or
indeed panicking when there is something of a major problem in the air, so to
speak.
As it was, one of the big red lights did indeed start to flash whilst I was in
the control room, accompanied by the sweet ding-dong of an audible alarm alert.
With the fault showing on the panels which controls the turbines and the
national grid feed it was obviously not a critical problem and, as one of the
operators strolled over, reset the alarm and chased up the problem on a mobile
phone ( not allowed by visitors because of the obvious dangers ... ! ), another
conversed, "Hey, casual as ever", showing that even nuclear plant
controllers are human and have a sense of humour.
Having not undergone any security or body check whatsoever, my guide's
amusing tale of how an American visitor had refused to undertake the
tour because she would not be accompanied by an armed guard, gave the ideal
cue to ask, "What if I was packing explosives and blew the whole control room
to pieces now then ?".
That there is another control room ( is there ? Well, now we know; not that we
hadn't guessed that there might well be ) didn't really answer the question,
given the damage that could be done in the heart of such a power plant.
And after a brief visit to the entrance area to the reactors and waste disposal
areas, access restricted because radiation doses would be received, that was the
end of the tour.
So, did I come away feeling that nuclear power was any safer than I thought it
was ?
No, in fact I was more concerned.
I personally would have no problem with nuclear power, fission or fusion, if
it could be proven and shown to be completely safe. It can't and I consider the
dangers that nuclear power present, in a worse case scenario, far outweigh its
usage at all.
The consequences of a nuclear disaster on the scale of Chernobyl are, for me
too horrific to contemplate. That the plant itself and those in charge are,
aledgedly, much better trained and overseen does not, in my mind, preclude such
a disaster occurring.
That the government and those in the nuclear industry have played down, what
could have been, and perhaps were, major incidents does nothing to inspire
any confidence that what we are told about safety reflects the truth.
Having toured Dungeness A I left more concerned than reassured.
It seemed to me that the plant is operated, treated and toured as if it were
no more than any other industrial complex.
Having explained the necessity for safety to those on the tour it was not
encouraging to see personnel in areas where hard hats and ear defenders
were required not to be using them and that is a breach of Health and Safety
Law.
Smoking outside of designated areas showed a complete disregard for the rules
imposed.
That anyone could waltz through on a guided tour, remove defect tags, throw
switches, turn dials, and remove fuses, even be packed with explosives, left
me feeling that the installation was insecure at least.
Whilst damage to the turbines and generators should do little to damage the
central operations of a nuclear plant, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and the,
non-nuclear, Piper Alpha incidents have shown that minor failures
in a system can have severe consequences.
The two CO2 storage containers, the touring party were shown at the start,
apparently crucial to the operation of the reactors, were vulnerable to
total destruction from anyone on a tour, inside the trip-wire defences, and
from those who could target the tanks from outside with heavy duty weapons.
What damage, and repercussions, an attack with one or more ground missiles
launched straight into the, rather fragile metal shell of the site, from a few
hundred metres outside the perimiter fence would have is a matter of
speculation. I suspect it would be little less than catastrophic despite the
beliefs that automatic safety systems would cut in.
I have had many reservations over how our nuclear installations are
operated and regulated.
Given the risks that nuclear power can pose; I expect nuclear installations
to be run in a professional and well controlled manner. Anything less is
inviting accident, error, mistake and danger.
The, perhaps minor, breaches of Health and Safety legislation which I saw, and
disregard for other self-imposed rules, leads me to suspect that there may well
be breaches of safety elsewhere in far more critical parts of the operation.
That the nuclear industry allows such visible breaches of legislation to be
made in full view of the public without taking any action to stamp out these
transgressions shows the contempt with which the public are treated and the
the sorry and complacent way in which the industry operates.
If the nuclear industry cannot even ensure that their workers can abide
by smoking restrictions and the wearing of requisite safety equipment, how
are we expected to believe it can control the safe operation of a nuclear
plant ?
And if the nuclear regulators don't see the things I have, and claim that
the plants are operating at the highest level of professionalism, and safely,
with full regard to legislation imposed upon them, why should we believe
them when they say that such installations are safe ?
