Different British nuclear reactors?

[NOMISYRRUC]

Do you want your children to glow in the dark? Then move to Windscale.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yt1Jd4stPFQ

 

[Scott Kenny]

Do you want your children to glow in the dark? Then move to Windscale.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yt1Jd4stPFQ

They're British.

They're already so pale they glow in the dark. (Says the redhead)

 

[Yellow Palace]

In fact, there were a couple of generations of it. A standard 500 MWe turbine-generator set went into 10 coal and 4 oil fired plants ordered from 1961 onwards. From 1967, an enlarged 660 MWe set went into one coal, two oil, and the AGR plants. There seems to have been some talk of a 900 MWe supercritical unit in the 1980s, but that never came to fruition.

A little more information from Earth Science Conservation No.25 in 1988 on the 900 MWe plant. In 1986, eight were projected to be built:

• Fawley B
• West Burton B
• Kingsnorth [presumably B]
• Inswork Point
• Marchwood
• Barking
• Hams Hall
• Killingholme

Applications were made for Fawley B and West Burton B, and Kingsnorth was expected to be requested in autumn 1988. They would be coal fired plants built with flue gas desulfurisation and low NOx burners. A model of the proposed Fawley B plant is shown on the 28 Days Later forum here. Presumably the others would have been similar.

There was also a map in New Scientist at some point in the 1970s or early 1980s showing sites identified for potential future reactors. There were... a lot.

Found the map - it's not from New Scientist at all, but from the 1985 book Geographical Dimensions of Energy:



In the course of looking for this, I did find a Nature article from 1971 indicating plans for:

• A 2,500 MW (presumably four unit) AGR plant at Connah's Quay
• A 1,300 MW (presumably two unit) AGR plant at Portskewett
• Oldbury B, a prototype HTR plant of 650 MW, building on experience with the Dragon reactor.

The planned full-scale HTR was abandoned as it was competing with the SGHWR for funding. Some sources suggest that it may have been a 1,320 MW plant - presumably twin reactor, as there were competing TNPG and BNDC designs for the plant of 650 MWe and 750 MWe respectively.

A number of oil-fired plants were also planned at this time which didn't come to pass:

• A 4,000 MW plant (presumably 6 x 660 MWe, similar to Drax) at Killingholme
• A plant at Inswork Point in Devon - this was to be 2 x 660 MWe
• Redevelopment of Brunswick Wharf in London - based on the total of 7,200 MWe, this would logically be 3 x 660 MWe similar to Littlebrook.

There's also reference in an IAEA conference paper from 1970 to the above AGR and HTR plants, plus an AGR at Stourport. This latter plant seems to have been defeated by local opposition. The Portskewett plant actually progressed to a planning application, which ran out of time and the plant was abandoned in 1979.

It should be seen that the CEGB's projected construction of new plant through the 1970s and 1980s anticipated a growth in demand that wasn't particularly realistic!

 

[Rule of cool]

I read an article that said in the 60s Britain expected to build a number of commercial fast breeder reactors, presumably alongside AGRs. The prototype fast reactor was sort of like the other 4 prototypes, a small proof of concept that was connected to the grid.

 

[Pirate Pete]

It's a shame that CNH isn't still around.



An interesting watch, but a bit hard going due to the narrator's delivery. At the start I honestly wasn't sure if it was human or robot generated.

Agreed.
I have his book ‘An Atomic Empire’ which makes for very interesting reading. It is still available in hard copy as well as e-book…
If you look hard enough, you can also get a pdf version….

 

[Yellow Palace]

I read an article that said in the 60s Britain expected to build a number of commercial fast breeder reactors, presumably alongside AGRs. The prototype fast reactor was sort of like the other 4 prototypes, a small proof of concept that was connected to the grid.

That's the Commercial Fast Reactor, which was always ten years away.

Projection was for a 3,100 MWth liquid metal cooled reactor to drive a 1,300 MWe turbine set, in a twin-unit plant. Assuming uranium oxide fuel, as was the case for the Prototype Fast Reactor, you'd be looking at one CFR for every two AGRs to balance the fuel cycle. A new fast reactor fuel processing facility would presumably also be needed.

In 1968, the UKAEA thought that 15 GWe of fast breeders - i.e. six twin-unit CFR stations - might be online by 1986... which proved to be rather optimistic! In reality, I suspect the story of an operational CFR would look a lot like that of Superphénix, which was a similar project in France.

As well as technical problems with the Prototype Fast Reactor, the CEGB wasn't particularly interested. By the time it was looking buildable, electricity demand was falling short of projections. Initially it was willing to provide a site, but not any funding; by the time the CFR project was abandoned, they weren't willing to provide a site either.

And since I'm nice, here's a sketch of how it might have looked, as envisaged in 1970.



Dimensions appear to be in metres. The source is a UKAEA paper on an alternative fast breeder using molten chloride salt as both fuel and coolant.

 

[srgtuly]

I haven't seen that specific YouTube documentary, but it's possible that the information you provided is accurate. The Advanced Gas-cooled Reactor (AGR) program in the UK did face some challenges during its development, including financial difficulties and technical issues.

 

[Rule of cool]

I haven't seen that specific YouTube documentary, but it's possible that the information you provided is accurate. The Advanced Gas-cooled Reactor (AGR) program in the UK did face some challenges during its development, including financial difficulties and technical issues.

At the very least it's on the right track. The prototype AGR had 250 fuel channels, the Atomic Power constructions bid had over 400 packed more closely and the later models found it optimum to have low 300 fuel channels spaced a bit further apart. From both a technical and financial standpoint it would have been better to have known this before embarking on a building programme, but the Government leapt at the APC 'breakthrough' with too much optimism. Finding this out before awarding contracts would have taken time which would have allowed the 'better' SGHWR to catch up to the AGR.