Candles burn for

child born of white heat

CONCEIVED by Tony Benn and delivered by Margaret Thatcher, it was always going to be an unusual baby.

However, Torness, Britain's showpiece nuclear power station, yesterday celebrated its 10th birthday with considerably less pomp and expense than its first.

It represented the last flickering of the white heat of technology which fuelled the Labour government of Harold Wilson.

Construction started under the Tories and it took 10 years for the leviathan to be carved out of the East Lothian coastline.

Costs doubled to more than #2000m and its birth was overshadowed by the near-catastrophic accident at Three Mile Island and, more seriously, in April 1986, by Chernobyl.

If this baby developed colic, there would be problems: with projectile vomiting, Edinburgh, scarcely 40 miles distant, could cop the full fall-out.

Anxieties peaked by the time Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher arrived for the formal nuclear nativity.

A much older sibling was jealous. Miners from Bilston Glen and Monktonhall demonstrated and their prediction of the virtual destruction of their industry, heavily dependent on electricity contracts, has proved prophetic.

The whole process was shrouded in secrecy, particularly in the run-up to electricity privatisation and the write-off of huge public-sector debts. Questions were raised about whether Torness would prove a bastard white elephant. Scottish Office officials told The Herald in 1989 that it had been an expensive mistake.

Yesterday's celebrations, with 50 guests, were much more muted than the #1m formal opening. Ironically, local MP John Home Robertson, who led the jeers for Mrs Thatcher's visit on the outside, was yesterday back on the inside cheering its success. Torness has a workforce of 560 and is one of East Lothian's largest employers. But numbers are due to fall to 490 next year, prompting the MP to warn that staff reductions could damage the station's safety record.

Torness has worked hard to develop links with the community. So far there have been few teething problems and no temper tantrums: Torness has had a clean bill of health from the nuclear inspectorate and won a string of safety awards from RoSPA.

Nor are there any nasty nappies on the doorstep: waste from Torness goes to Sellafield in Cumbria for reprocessing and storage of spent fuel.

The station is owned by Scottish Nuclear, now part of Edinburgh-based British Energy plc, whose deputy chairman, Dr Robin Jeffrey, said: ''The past 10 years have seen Torness perform even better than we had hoped.''

Leader comment Page 16