Walter Marshall, Baron Marshall of Goring

Lord 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 UK energy industry.

Marshall studied at the University of Birmingham, where he received his doctorate with Rudolf Peierls 1954. After that, he was from 1954 in the Theory Division of the Atomic Energy Research Establishment ( AERE ) at Harwell. In 1960, he was the successor of Brian Flowers Head of the Theory Department and from 1966 to 1975 Director of AERE. He was from 1974 Chief Scientist in the UK energy ministry until he that post 1977 under the Labour politician Tony Benn lost in a dispute over electricity prices for the poorer classes.

He was an energetic proponent 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 ). He remained until the dissolution of the CEGB in 1989 as part of the privatization in the UK electricity suppliers. In the same year, he became Chairman of National Power, which resulted from the privatization of the CEGB. He resigned from this post in 1989, when the nuclear energy component was spun off from National Power and generally from the privatization of state-owned print and then had various positions in the British nuclear energy industry. He was a consultant in Japan, where he enjoyed a high reputation, and in the insurance industry. But he did not regain his old role as a public exponent of nuclear energy in the UK again.

In 1982 he was knighted. Because of its use during the British miners' strike in the mid-1980s to maintain the country's power (Keep lights on campaign ), was awarded to him in 1985 by Margaret Thatcher, the peers - dignity (as Lord Marshall of Goring ).

After the Chernobyl disaster, he joined as energetic public fears counter by pointing to the design difference and different safety standards to western nuclear power plants. As a consequence, he was in 1989 one of the founders of the World Association of Nuclear Operators ( WANO ), the first chairman from 1989 to 1993 he was, and that should increase the safety standards in the world (even in the Soviet Union).

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

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