Lives in a Landscape - Nuclear Golf

With the trauma surrounding the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan and the increasing urgency of the debate about Britain's future use of nuclear power, Alan Dein joins a group for whom the nuclear industry has been an uninterrupted staple of their daily lives. But the golfing members of SASRA, the Sellafield Area Sports and Recreation Association, have a life away from the pressure of working at one of the most recognisable nuclear establishments in the world.

Alan Dein joins Don Gash, the treasurer, fixtures secretary and - in his own words - general dogsbody for the SASRA golf society and a small group as they play their weekly competition round on the old golf that hugged the Cumbrian coast between Seascale and Calder Hall long before the nuclear industry arrived to dominate the landscape. The talk is of dry fairways, short rough and the business of working for an industry that was once seen as heroic and pioneering before entering a period of intense critical scrutiny.

And Alan also wonders how these British nuclear workers view events at Fukushima where their Japanese colleagues face the worst nightmare of people involved in this business.

As they make their way to the far end of the course, the holes which neighbour the Sellafield landscape of their working lives, Alan learns how they balance a very particular kind of work and leisure.

Producer: Tom Alban.

Published on Monday, 5th December 2011.

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