The Ultimate Lock-In: Château Siran, 1970 – 2023
I followed Edouard Miailhe down a narrow corridor, illuminated by the gentle flicker of wall lights, each bulb fashioned in the shape of a candle flame. Reaching the end, we turned around, and I was greeted by the sight of a huge door. A weighty slab of solid steel painted a jet black, save for the golden ‘S’ of the Château Siran logo at the centre, its inky darkness seemed to suck the very light from the air.
With two gigantic handles, one at the top, and one at the bottom, it looked exactly like the sort of door you might find sealing the entrance to a nuclear bunker.
Grasping the upper handle, Edouard pulled it down 90 degrees, before he kicked the lower handle upwards in the same fashion. Slowly, he swung the great door open. It moved silently, with ease, the mechanism clearly well oiled, and yet I could sense the weight in the door by its slow and deliberate movement.
And now all was revealed; I could see immediately why the great door resembled the entrance to a Cold War nuclear fallout shelter.
Because that was exactly what it was.
Fallout Times
In 1979 the proprietor of Château Siran, Édouard’s father, William-Alain Miailhe (1931 – 2024), watched the global news with a grim concern. Two events troubled him. One was the accident in Unit 2 on Three Mile Island which resulted in a partial meltdown of the reactor core and the release of radioactive material into the atmosphere, with hindsight presaging events at Chernobyl just seven years later. The second was the construction of the nuclear power station at Blaye, on the opposite bank of the Gironde.
Exactly what, he wondered, would he do if Blaye suffered a similar catastrophe?
His solution was to build a nuclear bunker, complete with its giant steel door. And it still exists today, in perfect working order.
