Billingham Site (Billingham)

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Chemical and heavy industry site used by several companies for producing fertilisers, ammonia, etc. Formerly ICI Billingham.

*History*

With the declaration of the First World War, a high demand for explosives led to a massive expansion of Billingham. In 1917, Billingham was chosen to be the site of a new chemical works supplying ammonia for the war.[3] However, the plant was completed in 1920, after the war had ended. The Brunner Mond Company took over the site, and converted it to manufacture fertilisers. In December 1926, Brunner Mond merged with three other chemical companies to form Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), who took control of the plant. ICI began to produce plastics at Billingham in 1934.

Aldous Huxley visited the newly-opened and technologically-advanced Brunner and Mond plant at ICI and gave a detailed account of the processes he saw. The introduction to the most recent print of Brave New World states that Huxley was inspired to write the novel by this Billingham visit.
Billingham Town Centre Statue, a local landmark.

Henry Thorold in the Shell Guide to County Durham states:
“ This is one of the most extraordinary of experiences, a sight almost unique in England. On either side of the road are the works. Steaming, sizzling - tall steel towers, great cylinders, pipes everywhere... At night the whole industrial world along the banks of the Tees comes to life... brilliant with a thousand lights, the great girders of the Transporter Bridge dark in silhouette: a magic city." ”

From 1971 to 1988 ICI operated a small General Atomics TRIGA Mark I nuclear reactor at its Billingham factory. It also operated the coal-fired North Tees Power Station designed by Giles Gilbert Scott on the banks of the Tees, to provide electricity for its plants. This was eventually decommissioned and demolished in 1987. The site of the power station is now Billingham Reach Industrial Estate, an international wharf owned by Able UK Ltd. ICI no longer operates in Billingham, having sold many of its businesses during the restructuring of the company in the 1990s. Some of the company's former manufacturing plants are still in operation, run by other chemical companies.
[edit] Anhydrite Mine

In 1983, NIREX announced a proposal to use the now-disused anhydrite mine as a site for the disposal of intermediate level nuclear waste. There was a huge public outcry, since despite the suitability of the site in geological terms, it was very close to a large population centre. Subsequently, in 1985, the plans were dropped. More recent plans in 2007 to re-open the mines for "use as a long-term disposal facility for low hazard waste" were met with similar opposition, and a petition of 3,200 signatures against the mine's opening was presented to the local authority.