March 1959: Japan's first nuclear power station

With the UK now heavily reliant on Japanese firm Hitachi to keep its nuclear ambitions on track, The Engineer’s 1959 article on Japan’s first nuclear power station, is a poignant reminder of both the UK’s diminished expertise in this area, and the impact of the 2011 Fukushima crisis.

The article - which can be read in detail here - reports on negotiations between the Japan Atomic power  company and  the UK’s General Electric Company (GEC) for the supply of a 140MW Magnox power station Tokai Mura, 65 miles North-East of Tokyo.

‘The station which will be designed for a net electrical output of 150MW will derive its power from a single gas-cooled, graphite moderated reactor’ ’

The Engineer reported that though similar in design to reactors that were being built for the Scottish Hunterston power station, the preliminary design for the Tokai plant had paid special attention to its ability to “withstand earthquake conditions”  including a shut-down procedure designed to work even if the reactors was tilted at 45°.