U.K. Takes Down A Piece Of Nuclear History

Explosive charges leveled two giant cooling towers at the world's first commercial nuclear power station Saturday, as engineers began the planned decommissioning of Calder Hall, a 62-building site on Britain's west coast.

The first two of four 289-foot towers crumbled to the ground just after 9 a.m., spewing plumes of dust over the Irish Sea to "oohs" and "ahs" from onlookers.

Calder Hall, officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1956, produced weapons-grade plutonium while also feeding energy into Britain's national grid.

The opening was hailed as an "epoch-making" event and praised as an example of Britain's engineering prowess, reports the BBC News.

"This new power, which has proved itself to be such a terrifying weapon of destruction, is harnessed for the first time for the common good of our community," said the Queen in during the plant's inauguration, according to the BBC.

Although smaller research reactors had been used previously to generate electricity, Calder Hall was the first plant to generate commercial quantities of electricity. The Shippingport Atomic Power Station, in Pennsylvania, was the first such facility built in the United States. It went into operation in 1957.

The inauguration of the plant was a big enough event that some children were given the day off of school, reports the BBC.

Marjorie Taylor told the BBC that she was at Calder Hall with thousands of onlookers awaiting the Queen's arrival and still has the invitation.

Interviewed in 2006, she said: "We stood for hours. One woman near us collapsed because she had been so excited to see the Queen that she had left home very early without eating anything. We found a camp chair and a sandwich for her."

Power generation at Calder Hall stopped in March 2003, when the final reactor there was shut down.

By that time the stations' 50-year-old towers, which cooled water used by the plant, had started to degrade and needed to be demolished, site manager Paul Brennan said.

Brennan said the demolition took three years of planning, and Sellafield Ltd., which manages the site, said it would take 12 weeks to clear the rubble.