Walter Marshall, Baron Marshall of Goring

Walter Charles Marshall, Baron Marshall of Goring (born March 5, 1932 in Rumney (Cardiff) , † February 20, 1996 in London ) was a British theoretical physicist and manager in the British energy industry.

Marshall studied at the University of Birmingham , where he received his doctorate under Rudolf Peierls in 1954. From 1954 he then worked in the theory department of the Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE) in Harwell. In 1960 he succeeded Brian Flowers as head of the theory department and from 1966 to 1975 director of AERE. He was chief scientist in the British Department of Energy from 1974 until he lost this post in 1977 under Labor politician Tony Benn in a dispute over electricity prices for poorer sections of the population.

He was a staunch supporter of nuclear energy and from 1981 Chairman of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority and from 1983 Chairman of the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB). It remained that way until the dissolution of the CEGB in 1989 as part of the privatization of the British electricity suppliers. That same year he became Chairman of National Power, which arose from the privatization of the CEGB. He resigned from this post in 1989 when the nuclear component of National Power and privatization in general was spun off under government pressure, and has thereafter held various positions in the UK nuclear industry. He was a consultant in Japan, where he was highly regarded, and in the insurance industry. He did not regain his old role as a public exponent of nuclear energy in Great Britain.

In 1982 he was ennobled. Because of his work during the British miners' strike in the mid-1980s to maintain the country's electricity supply ( Keep lights on campaign), Margaret Thatcher made him a life peer on July 22, 1985, with the title Baron Marshall of Goring, of South Stoke in the County of Oxfordshire raised. A seat in the House of Lords was associated with the title .

After the Chernobyl nuclear disaster , he also vigorously countered public fears by pointing out the design difference and different safety standards to Western nuclear power plants. As a consequence, in 1989 he was one of the founders of the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO), of which he was the first chairman from 1989 to 1993 and which was supposed to raise safety standards worldwide (also in the Soviet Union).

In 1971 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society and in 1977 an external member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering. In 1973 he became CBE .

He had been married to Ann Sheppard since 1955 and had a son and daughter.

Web links

• Obituary in The Independent
• Walter Marshall at Hansard (English)
• The Marshall estate was processed by NCUACS, Bath, England [https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/contributors/ncuacs.html] in 2008 and transferred to the Churchill Archives Center, Cambridge in 2009. A catalog is available in digital and paper form.