User:NorthernKnightNo1/Risley Atomic

Risley Atomic
Risley Atomic was the name by which the Risley headquarters of the UKAEA was known by its workers and the people living in the locality. Soon after the end of World War II in January 1946 an organisation, under the aegis of the Ministry of Supply, was set up to produce fissile material and chose Risley to build its headquarters, under the control of Sir Christopher Hinton, Baron Hinton of Bankside. This project, to produce a nuclear weapon or A-bomb was by far the UK’s biggest industrial and scientific undertaking in peace time, requiring most of the countries’ top scientists and a huge budget and scale that couldn't even be contemplated these days.

The early atomic site used many of the old Royal Ordanance Factory buildings and also the dedicated raillink to the Manchester/Wigan branch line bringing in workers from Manchester.

In 1954 the Risley headquarters site was greatly expanded again with the formal establishment of the UKAEA (United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority) heralding the beginning of the civil nuclear power program which ran alongside the military one. By this time the organisation had more than 20,000 workers. Design and construction of all other UKAEA plants was overseen here, technical policy and long term planning, finance and administration as well as world leading scientific research in physics, chemistry and engineering. The biggest increase was between 1955 and 1958 when the need for producing much more plutonium and highly enriched uranium and development of new materials such as tritium required for the H-bomb, which the Government announced it would develop in February 1955. By 1961 more than 40,000 were employed, the biggest percentage at the Risley HQ.

So sensitive was the work carried out at Risley, particularly during the forties, fifties and sixties that the former site of the ROF was regularly patrolled by UKAEA Police Force vans. The slightest movement being spotted and investigated immediately.