Blogposts tagged 'Reactor Safety'

A day trip to Sellafield

Posted by ben - 13 December 2007 at 2:53pm - 2 Comments

Earlier in the week the nukes campaign team were lucky / unlucky (delete as appropriate) enough to be taken on a tour of Sellafield, the UK's biggest nuclear site. And it was a bit of an eye opener.

It's a massive site, covering about 4km2, which meant we couldn't see everything in one go. So we spent most of our time in the vitrification plant watching high level waste being mixed with molten glass and poured into huge milk churns prior to storage (this stuff is so dangerous that if you placed a flask of it in the centre circle of a football pitch and tried to walk to it from the dug out, it would kill you before you reached it), and then in the hugely expensive Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP).

Article tagged as: nuclear power, nuclear waste, reactor safety, sellafield

British Energy melts down; British taxpayer cleans up

Posted by ben - 8 November 2007 at 12:03pm - 0 Comments

More bad news for British Energy (BE), the UK's biggest nuclear electricity generator (when their creaking fleet of reactors actually happen to produce any power, that is). They've discovered that faults unearthed at two of their reactors pose more of a "complex issue" than previously thought and so the reactors are going to be offline for the foreseeable future. This news sent BE's shares tumbling by 10 per cent. Or as The Independent put it shares "went into meltdown".

A few weeks back BE announced that during a routine inspection "an issue related to a wire winding" was found in the boiler of the reactor unit at Hartlepool nuclear power station. This was rather unexpected and BE, as a Daniel come to judgement, took what it described as "a conservative decision" and shut the reactor at Hartlepool, as well as its sister unit at Heysham 1. Just as a precaution. Things were expected to be ship shape and bristol fashion very soon, so don't panic Mr Mainwaring. Indeed.

Article tagged as: british energy, nuclear power, nuclear subsidies, reactor safety

Looking back at the Windscale nuclear disaster, 50 years on

Posted by bex - 10 October 2007 at 12:18pm - 0 Comments

Today is the official end of the government's nuclear "consultation" (more on that coming soon). It's also the 50th anniversary of the world's second biggest nuclear disaster - at Windscale, now known as Sellafield, in West Cumbria.

Jean McSorley, a nuclear consultant, has written about the disaster in today's Guardian. It's powerful stuff, so I'm posting an extract here:

 

"I opened the gag-port and there it was - a fire at the face of the reactor. I thought: 'Oh dear, now we are in a pickle.'" Those were the words of the late Arthur Wilson, the instrument technician who discovered the Windscale fire on October 10 1957, in No 1 of the twin plutonium piles. It signalled the beginning of the world's second biggest nuclear reactor accident.

Article tagged as: nuclear disasters, nuclear power, reactor safety, sellafield, windscale

Impact of Japan's nuclear accident

Posted by bex - 31 July 2007 at 12:45pm - 1 Comment

Reuters has a new video report on the impacts of earthquake-struck Japan's recent nuclear accident, which means Kawashaki nuclear plant will be closed indefinitely:

Japan's killer earthquake left its biggest nuclear power company facing financial losses, supply questions, and demands for greater safety.

The video's here (there's an advert before the Reuters report starts).

Article tagged as: earthquakes, japan, nuclear accidents, nuclear power, reactor safety

Kashiwazaki nuclear plant - report from the scene

Posted by bex - 24 July 2007 at 6:28pm - 0 Comments

After the conflicting reports about last week's earthquake in Japan, a Greenpeace team of nuclear and radiation experts headed over to Japan to check radiation levels on the ground.

Happily, most places the team checked around the plant didn't show signs of increased radioactivity, but they had a couple of bizarre moments along the way. Their diaries are on our international site.

Article tagged as: japan, nuclear accidents, nuclear power, radiation, radioactivity, reactor safety

Sweden closes nuclear plants over safety fears

Posted by bex - 4 August 2006 at 8:00am - 0 Comments
forsmark nuclear power plant in Sweden

forsmark nuclear power plant in Sweden

"It was pure luck there wasn't a meltdown," said a former director of Forsmark nuclear power plant after a serious incident at that plant last week. Now Sweden has shut down four of its 10 nuclear plants after faults were discovered. And a generator failure like Sweden's could easily happen in the UK.

Article tagged as: meltdown, nuclear accidents, nuclear power, reactor safety, sweden

UK nuclear reactors are defective, say government inspectors

Posted by bex - 5 July 2006 at 8:00am - 0 Comments

A huge KAPOW projected onto Torness power station

A nuclear expert has called for nuclear reactors in the UK to be "immediately shut down" after secret documents written by government inspectors reveal they contain structural defects.

The documents - which were passed to Greenpeace days before Tony Blair is expected to give the go-ahead to a new generation of nuclear power stations - show that the government's Nuclear Safety Directorate (NSD) has identified cracks in the cores of up to 14 UK reactors, rendering them at increased risk of a radiological accident.

Article tagged as: climate change, decentralised energy, government, nuclear power, reactor safety, tony blair

Assessment of the operational risks and hazards of the EPR when subject to aircraft crash

Publication date:  19 May, 2006

A brief review of a confidential leaked EdF document

Summary

This is a brief review of a confidential EdF document that has been leaked to the public domain in France.

The EdF document relates to the projected performance of the AREVA designed Generation III EPR reactor. The first of this reactor type is presently being built at Olkiluoto in Finland and construction of a second EPR is expected to commence shortly at the established nuclear power station site at Flamanville in France.

Download the report:
Article tagged as: EDF, EPR, nuclear accidents, nuclear power, reactor safety, reports, terrorism

The future for nuclear power?

Posted by bex - 19 May 2006 at 8:00am - 0 Comments

Friday the 13th

A secret document has revealed that the new breed of nuclear reactor Blair is considering building is highly vulnerable to terrorist attack.

The Electricite de France (EDF) document looks at the vulnerability to terrorist attack of the new European Pressurised Reactors (EPR). These reactors are already under construction in France and Finland and may be built in the UK if Tony Blair has his way.

Article tagged as: government, nuclear power, reactor safety, terrorism

Interim Review: Leak of radioactive liquor in the feed clarification cell at BNG THORP Sellafield

Publication date:  20 April, 2006

Review of the management and technical aspects of the failure and its implications for the future of THORP

Summary

Published by nuclear engineers John Large & Associates, this review examines the failure of pipework in the feed clarification cell of the thermal oxide reprocessing plant (THORP) at Sellafield that resulted in closure of the plant in April 2005. Operation of THORP is contracted to the British Nuclear Group (BNG) and owned by the government agency the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA).

Download the report:
Article tagged as: BNG, NDA, nuclear accidents, nuclear power, radioactivity, reactor safety, reports, sellafield
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