Sizewell

Sometimes the simplest scenes appeal the most. In this portrait of Sizewell beach on the Suffolk coast, there is nothing but a few pebbles and the effect of a retreating and approaching wave, caught in the colours and fading light of a short winter’s day.

Three weeks before this image was captured, a crack in a pipe caused a spillage of 40,000 gallons of radioactive water from the nearby Sizewell nuclear power station, some of which leaked into the North Sea. Had this spillage not been identified (by a contractor who spotted the water on a laundry floor) then enough water would have continued to leak before the next scheduled safety check to expose the nuclear rods, allowing them potentially to overheat and catch fire. In this worst-case scenario, an investigation concluded, the exposed irradiated fuel would have created an “airborne off-site release” – in other words, a release of radioactive contamination along the Suffolk coastline.

Canon EOS 5D and EF 16-35mm lens.

Exposure of 1.6 seconds at f/22.