In 1956, Calder Hall, England, the connection was made - so that Calder Hall became the world's first commercial nuclear power station supplying electricity to the national electricity grid - in preparation for the official opening on 17 Oct 1956 by Queen Elizabeth II. By the time it was closed on 31 Mar 2003, it had served for nearly 47 years. Its four Magnox reactors were capable of generating 50 MWe of electricity, but with production of weapons-grade plutonium as its original primary use. Christopher Hinton (later Lord Hinton) was given the task in 1952 to design and build Calder Hall. Construction began in 1953. It is part of the larger Sellafield site, near the village of Seascale on the coast of the Irish Sea in Cumbria.«[Image: Two cooling towers (one behind) and some of the power plant site.] Calder Hall: The story of Britain's First Atomic Power Station, by Kenneth Edmund Brian Jay. - book suggestion.