https://www.bbc.com/news/business-67087673
"A dense forest of cranes, visible for miles around, marks the spot where the
UK's first new nuclear plant in a generation is being built, at Hinkley Point
in Somerset.
Once building is complete, it is expected to generate enough electricity to
supply some six million homes, for the next 60 years.
But just a few hundred yards away stand two very visible reminders that the
legacy of nuclear power stations remains long after they stop producing power.
The first of these, a vast, angular structure looming over the Bristol Channel,
is Hinkley Point B. When it opened in 1976, its two advanced gas-cooled
reactors (AGRs) were state of the art.
But over nearly half a century of generation, cracks developed in their
graphite cores, creating potential safety concerns, and they were shut down for
good last year.
Yet inside the cavernous main hall, little seems to have changed. Freshly
painted machinery gleams under bright lights, as teams of workers in blue
boiler suits scurry around above the reactors themselves.
The main activity at the moment is defueling: removing hundreds of fuel
assemblies from deep within the reactor cores, stripping them down, and sending
the wastes away for storage at Sellafield.
As we watch, a large steel tower is being positioned over the reactor. This is
the charging machine. It looks rather like an old-fashioned helter-skelter, but
in fact it is a heavily-shielded crane.
The fuel assemblies, having been in the reactor for years, are highly
radioactive and need to be handled with extreme care."
Via Danny ter Haar and Christoph S.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
