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In Hinkley's Shadow

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Factual: Life Stories

30/03/2010

BBC Radio 4 - In Hinkley's Shadow

Chris Ledgard visits Hinkley Point to sample life in the shadow of a nuclear power station

Chris Ledgard investigates how living in the shadow of a nuclear power station has shaped a community, visiting the Somerset village of Stogursey, two miles from Hinkley Point.

The villages around Hinkley Point in Somerset have lived with nuclear power for nearly half a century. As plans are developed for a new power station, Chris Ledgard investigates life in a nuclear community.

In medieval times, the village of Stogursey on the edge of the Quantock Hills was a market town. Over the centuries, its importance diminished. Then work began on a nuclear power station on the Somerset coast just 2 miles away, and Stogursey found itself in demand again - families flooded in and the school sent its overspill to the village hall. In Hinkley's Shadow is a portrait of a nuclear community. The first generation of Britain's nuclear power workers are now retired. At Hinkley, their children are now working on the site. So how is it to have grown up in the shadow of a nuclear power station? Chris Ledgard talks to people who work in and around Hinkley, including a mud horse fisherman, said to be the last in the world, who fishes with a sledge he pushes out into Bridgwater Bay. And as the debate on the new station, Hinkley Point C, develops, the anti-nuclear protestors enter another battle. But what happens to a protest movement as it nears middle age?

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