Hunterstone B entering decommissioning

[Moxi]

Morning,

Looks like Hunterstone B is entering its decommissioning stage as of noon today when R4 is shut down.

Is this an odd choice to take it off the grid in the worst winter months ? or is it a good choice given the Scottish wind generation capability ?

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/h ... hp&pc=U531

Moxi

[nowty]

They had no choice, cracks in the graphite core fuel sleeves.

I did my apprenticeship at the factory that made the nuclear fuel for them, back in the 80's.

[dan_b]

I didn't realise that the life extension programme took it from 25 to 45 years, that's really quite impressive. But I get the impression it was being held together with sticky tape by the end?!

I know I flip-flop between being pro- and against- nuclear - and I'm currently leaning back towards the pro, simply because of the sheer amount of power these things can deliver for their (extended) lifespan. Hinkley C can't be switched on soon enough in my opinion. And I really do think the Govt needs to stop faffing about and make an investment decision on the other new nuclear sites.

[Moxi]

Did you work up at Springfields then Nowty ? what a small world! As fuel assemblies go I always thought the ceramic coated AGR fuel, cladding and stringer assembly was way better than the Magnox cans, still not without significant issues eg ratcheting but better.

Dan-b,

Having spent a long time as part of the clean up for the older magnox fleet and some of the non civil stuff I would say that nuclear power hasn't got a viable future until we finally address the issue of the increasing volumes of radio active debris that are presently stored in a mixture of forms and structures which range from the adequate to the disaster waiting to happen variety.

There is around 54 years of accumulated materials sat still waiting to have a formal disposal route and location identified - what other industry would be allowed to proliferate without having a plan for the end waste disposal under modern legislation? It will be interesting to see how well an AGR power station comes apart and how much of the reactor island needs longer term care and maintenance when compared with the magnox fleet but the spent fuel and fuel assemblies will have a similar long term storage impact as the Mnx fleets spent fuel.

Don't get me wrong I love the concept of all that energy available for harvesting from splitting, or better still fusing atoms, its just that we don't as a country seem to have the will to grasp the thorny issue of what to do with all the long lasting "Crud" nor does the generation plant seem to include the costs of disposal and the embodied energy of disposal and storage in their calculations.

Nuclear can work as a state funded and managed system but as a profit generating enterprise the hard to deal with waste is always going to be passed to the public sector as too hard to deal with so why continue to stack up the costs for future generations when there are other easier generation forms with easier disposal routes.

Moxi

[nowty]

Did you work up at Springfields then Nowty ? what a small world! As fuel assemblies go I always thought the ceramic coated AGR fuel, cladding and stringer assembly was way better than the Magnox cans, still not without significant issues eg ratcheting but better.

Yep, quite a life experience at Springfields, learnt just about everything there was to do with electrics, level, flow, temp, pressure and dealing with dangerous everything, hydrogen gas, hydrofluoric acid, nitric acid, liquid nitrogen, mercury, magnesium and that's before we get onto uranium in all its forms including powdered, gaseous and molten, radiation, contamination, risk of spontaneous criticality.

It was in the crazy days of high jinks where you could go to the pub at lunch time, get hammered and as long as you could still walk, the armed police would let you back in. When you rotated a section after each 3 months, something bad would happen to you, thrown into a pond, dangled out of a window, tied up and locked into a cabinet, etc. And if you got married, one guy was handed over drunk to the onsite restaurant screaming women who then stripped him naked, tied him up and covered him with baked beans.

I also did some work commissioning the THORP plant at Sellafield post university but working for a sub contractor.

[Moxi]

I recognise those days well Nowty, times do change and in some circumstances I feel are for the better - others.......not so much.

One of my mentors used to tell me about the teams taking a lunch time swim in the coolant out fall streams at the stations where the water was always a toasty 20+ degrees. The bass fishing at Wylfa outfalls used to be exciting with monstrously large specimens due to the good feeding in the warm waters rather than anything more sinister !

For a few years I was the licencing and compliance manager for Urenco Chem products who are tasked with decomposing the uranium hexafluoride back to a more manageable and relatively benign uranium oxide powder with Hydrofluoric acid as the other, much less benign, output, so we have both sampled the delights of the chemical and radiological hazards of the industry.

Although I have been in a lot of the buildings up there Thorpe was not one of them - much of my time being in the SIXEP and Vit areas and the older areas up towards the old Windscale piles including dirty 30.

Moxi

[dan_b]

People pay good money for that kind of kink these days

one guy was handed over drunk to the onsite restaurant screaming women who then stripped him naked, tied him up and covered him with baked beans.

[Marcus]

Aha- is that why we're down 1.5Gw to 5.3 on gridwatch? - didn't even manage 2 weeks at 6.8.

[nowty]

Aha- is that why we're down 1.5Gw to 5.3 on gridwatch? - didn't even manage 2 weeks at 6.8.

Never going to see 6.8GW of Nuke for a long time with Hinkley Point B shutting July 2022.

Plus Heysham 1 and Hartlepool will close in 2024, at least a couple of years before Hinkley Point C comes online to get us back to about 6GW.

Then we lose Torness and Heysham 2 in 2028 and we will be left with just Sizewell B and Hinkley Point C at a little over 4GW.

I remember being interviewed for a job at Heysham 2 when it was only a couple of years old.