nuclear-news

Nuclear plant 45 years working, 100 years++ to get rid of it

Oldbury nuclear power station shutdown: What next? By Chris Kelly BBC News, 29 Feb 12,   “…….the beginning of the end for Oldbury. The end, though, will extend many more years into the future than Oldbury’s 45-year history.

Over the next three years, all 52,000 fuel elements inside the station’s nuclear reactor will be gradually removed which will mean no more heat is generated by the reactor. The fuel is then taken away – by road from Oldbury to nearby Berkeley, site of another inactive nuclear power station – and then by rail to Sellafield where it is reprocessed.

Once the fuel has gone, other hazards and chemicals on the site such as carbon dioxide, hydrogen and acids are taken away and some of the buildings on the site will be demolished. “That will probably take about 15 years from now – so in the 2020s,” said Mr Sprauge. “What we will be left with then is the two reactor buildings and the centre block and pretty much nothing else.”

The longest job of the entire operation, though, will then begin. Leaving the station to slowly lose its radioactivity.  And that job – which requires little human intervention – will take some 80 long years while the radioactivity from components in the reactor slowly fades.

The final bow for Oldbury’s mysterious looking reactor buildings will then come in 2109 when work can begin to pull them down. By then, the Oldbury reactor buildings may have a new neighbour. Horizon Nuclear Power – a conglomerate formed by E.On and RWE – hope to build a new power station, next to the existing reactor building, by 2019.

But one resident of nearby Sheperdine – Reg Illingworth – is less than pleased about the idea of a new reactor there.

Mr Illingworth, originally from Liverpool, moved to the nearby village of Shepperdine when plans were afoot to decommission Oldbury in 2007. But the life of the station was extended until 2012 before plans for the the Oldbury B station were announced.

“I’m hyper, hyper worried,” said Mr Illingworth, who is a member of a local anti-nuclear campaign group. He added he was “glad to see it’s closing”……http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-17131988

February 29, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | decommission reactor, Reference, UK