The Single D and C Company

Abstract

Agitation for a single company to design and build nuclear boilers started in 1964, before Dungeness B had been ordered. It was not in response to the Dungeness B disaster, but arose out of the disappointments, frictions and struggles for power of the latter years of Phase I, when orders for Magnox plants were reduced and phased out, when there were no more exports and the selection of the AGR to succeed Magnox was threatened by the LWR. After an AGR was ordered for Dungeness B, it was widely expected that export orders could be obtained immediately. Absence of such orders proved irrevocably that the consortia, established to convert prototypes brilliantly developed by the AEA into commercial plants, were, because of their form, their function and their number, a source of high costs and a damper on export effort. When the second order for an AGR plant was given to TNPG, not to APC, this was seized upon, as recorded earlier, by APC, AEA and Labour and Liberal members of the Select Committee as further proof of the wastes which the consortia system entailed.¹ The case for the single company was thus argued on the assumption that the AGR, as designed by AEA and APC, should be an economic success, but was a success manqué, due to the consortia and the consortia system.