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Hinkley Point A Nuclear Power Station
Hinkley Point A nuclear power station is a Magnox nuclear power station undergoing decommissioning. It is located on a site in Somerset on the Bristol Channel coast, west of the River Parrett estuary. The ongoing decommissioning process is being managed by Nuclear Decommissioning Authority licensee Magnox Ltd. History Hinkley Point A was one of three Magnox power stations located close to the mouth of the River Severn and the Bristol Channel, the others being Oldbury, and Berkeley. The construction of the power station, which was undertaken by a consortium backed by English Electric, Babcock & Wilcox Ltd and Taylor Woodrow Construction, began in 1957. The reactors and the turbines were supplied by English Electric. In 1988, reactor 2 set a world record for the longest continuous period of power generation from a commercial nuclear reactor, of 700days and 7hours. Hunterston A Nuclear Power Station held the previous world record of 698 days. The power station, which is u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Electric Diesel Engines
English Electric's K, RK and V type diesel engines were manufactured by the English Electric company of the United Kingdom for stationary, rail transport and maritime use between 1934 and 1968. History Initially, the "K" type engine developed in the 1930s were offered in I4, I6, I7 and I8 variants, had 2-valve cylinder heads and ran at 600-680rpm Revolutions per minute (abbreviated rpm, RPM, rev/min, r/min, or with the notation min−1) is a unit of rotational speed or rotational frequency for rotating machines. Standards ISO 80000-3:2019 defines a unit of rotation as the dimensionl .... In 1940, turbocharging became an option, boosting power output by about 61%. Due to the demand of more power, the Mark I "RK" (Revised K) and "V" type were introduced in 1947. The "V" type were built in V8, V12 and V16 configurations. In 1951, the engines received 4-valve cylinder heads, thus creating Mark II "RK" and "V" types which ran at 750-900rpm. Intercooling was now opti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hinkley Point
Hinkley Point is a headland on the Bristol Channel coast of Somerset, England, north of Bridgwater and west of Burnham-on-Sea, close to the mouth of the River Parrett. Excavations in 2014 and 2015, carried out by Cotswold Archaeology and funded by Électricité de France (EDF) in preparation for the construction of Hinkley Point C nuclear power station, discovered a farming settlement at the site dating from the Iron Age and then a post Roman cemetery. Hinkley Point adjoins the Bridgwater Bay ( Site of Special Scientific Interest) and nature reserve, and is a popular location for birdwatching and fossil hunting. A visitor centre in the nearby town Bridgwater gives access to information, as well as running tours of the plant. There is also a nature trail which features plants, birds and butterflies. The exposed location of Hinkley Point meant that it was considered ideal for wind generation. However, a proposal to build 12 wind turbines close to the site of the nuclear po ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
River Parrett
The River Parrett flows through the counties of Dorset and Somerset in South West England, from its source in the Thorney Mills springs in the hills around Chedington in Dorset. Flowing northwest through Somerset and the Somerset Levels to its mouth at Burnham-on-Sea, into the Bridgwater Bay nature reserve on the Bristol Channel, the Parrett and its tributaries drain an area of – about 50 per cent of Somerset's land area, with a population of 300,000. The Parrett's main tributaries include the Rivers Tone, Isle, and Yeo, and the River Cary via the King's Sedgemoor Drain. The long river is tidal for up to Oath. The fall of the river between Langport and Bridgwater is only , so it is prone to frequent flooding in winter and during high tides. Many approaches have been tried since at least the medieval period to reduce the incidence and effect of floods and to drain the surrounding fields. In Anglo-Saxon times the river formed a boundary between Wessex and Dumn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Marsh, Baron Marsh
Richard William Marsh, Baron Marsh, (14 March 1928 – 29 July 2011) was a British politician and business executive. Background and early life Marsh was the son of William Marsh, a foundry worker from Belvedere in southeast London. His father subsequently worked for the Great Western Railway, and the family moved to Swindon. He was educated at Jennings Street Secondary School, Swindon, Woolwich Polytechnic and Ruskin College, Oxford. He initially worked as an official for the National Union of Public Employees from 1951 to 1959, during which time he sat on the Clerical and Administrative Whitley Council for the National Health Service. Parliamentary and ministerial career After unsuccessfully standing at Hertford in 1951, Marsh was elected as Labour Party Member of Parliament (MP) for Greenwich at the 1959 general election. As a backbencher he submitted a private members bill in 1960 which despite Government opposition became the Offices, Shops and Railway Premises Act ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ministry Of Power (United Kingdom)
The Ministry of Power was a United Kingdom government ministry dealing with issues concerning energy. The Ministry of Power (then named Ministry of Fuel and Power) was created on 11 June 1942 from functions separated from the Board of Trade. It took charge of coal production, allocation of fuel supplies, control of energy prices and petrol rationing. These had previously been dealt with by the Secretary for Mines and in the case of petroleum since 1940 by the Secretary for Petroleum. The Petroleum Board, responsible for the coordination of the war-time petroleum 'pool' for oil supplies (except oil for the Royal Navy), continued in this role until the Board was dissolved in 1948. It also took over responsibility for electricity from the Ministry of War Transport and its predecessor the Ministry of Transport. The Ministry of Fuel and Power was renamed the Ministry of Power in January 1957. The Ministry of Power later became part of the Ministry of Technology on 6 October 196 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SCRAM
A scram or SCRAM is an emergency shutdown of a nuclear reactor effected by immediately terminating the fission reaction. It is also the name that is given to the manually operated kill switch that initiates the shutdown. In commercial reactor operations, this type of shutdown is often referred to as a "scram" at boiling water reactors (BWR), a "reactor ''trip''" at pressurized water reactors and at a CANDU reactor. In many cases, a scram is part of the routine shutdown procedure, which serves to test the emergency shutdown system. The etymology of the term is a matter of debate. United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission historian Tom Wellock notes that ''scram'' is English-language slang for leaving quickly and urgently, and cites this as the original and most likely accurate basis for the use of ''scram'' in the technical context. A persistent alternative explanation posits that ''scram'' is an acronym for "safety control rod axe man", which was supposedly coined by Enrico ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nuclear Weapons And The United Kingdom
In 1952, the United Kingdom became the third country (after the United States and the Soviet Union) to develop and test nuclear weapons, and is one of the five nuclear-weapon states under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The UK initiated a nuclear weapons programme, codenamed Tube Alloys, during the Second World War. At the Quebec Conference in August 1943, it was merged with the American Manhattan Project. The British contribution to the Manhattan Project saw British scientists participate in most of its work. The British government considered nuclear weapons to be a joint discovery, but the American Atomic Energy Act of 1946 (McMahon Act) restricted other countries, including the UK, from access to information about nuclear weapons. Fearing the loss of Britain's great power status, the UK resumed its own project, now codenamed High Explosive Research. On 3 October 1952, it detonated an atomic bomb in the Monte Bello Islands in Australia in Operatio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Weapons-grade Plutonium
Weapons-grade nuclear material is any fissionable nuclear material that is pure enough to make a nuclear weapon or has properties that make it particularly suitable for nuclear weapons use. Plutonium and uranium Uranium is a chemical element with the symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Uranium is weak ... in grades normally used in nuclear weapons are the most common examples. (These nuclear materials have special nuclear material, other categorizations based on their purity.) Only fissile isotopes of certain elements have the Critical mass#Critical mass of a bare sphere, potential for use in nuclear weapons. For such use, the concentration of fissile isotopes uranium-235 and plutonium-239 in the element used must be sufficiently high. Uranium from natural sources is enriched by isotope separation, and plutonium is produce ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Magnox (alloy)
Magnox is an alloy—mainly of magnesium with small amounts of aluminium and other metals—used in cladding unenriched uranium metal fuel with a non-oxidising covering to contain fission products in nuclear reactors. Magnox is short for Magnesium non-oxidising. This material has the advantage of a low neutron capture cross section, but has two major disadvantages: *It limits the maximum temperature (to about 415 Celsius), and hence the thermal efficiency, of the plant. *It reacts with water, preventing long-term storage of spent fuel under water in spent fuel pools. The magnox alloy Al80 has a composition of 0.8% aluminium and 0.004% beryllium. See also * Magnox Magnox is a type of nuclear power/production reactor that was designed to run on natural uranium with graphite as the moderator and carbon dioxide gas as the heat exchange coolant. It belongs to the wider class of gas-cooled reactors. The n ... nuclear power reactors. References {{DEFAULTSORT:Magn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Calder Hall
Sellafield is a large multi-function nuclear site close to Seascale on the coast of Cumbria, England. As of August 2022, primary activities are nuclear waste processing and storage and nuclear decommissioning. Former activities included nuclear power generation from 1956 to 2003, and nuclear fuel reprocessing from 1952 to 2022. Reprocessing ceased on 17 July 2022, when the Magnox Reprocessing Plant completed its last batch of fuel after 58 years of operation. The licensed site covers an area of , and comprises more than 200 nuclear facilities and more than 1,000 buildings. It is Europe's largest nuclear site and has the most diverse range of nuclear facilities in the world situated on a single site. The site's workforce size varies, and before the COVID-19 pandemic was approximately 10,000 people. The UK's National Nuclear Laboratory has its Central Laboratory and headquarters on the site. Originally built as a Royal Ordnance Factory in 1942, the site briefly passed into the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hunterston A Nuclear Power Station
Hunterston A nuclear power station is a decommissioned Magnox nuclear power station located at Hunterston in Ayrshire, Scotland, adjacent to Hunterston B. The ongoing decommissioning process is being managed by Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) subsidiary Magnox Ltd. History Construction of the power station, which was undertaken by a consortium of GEC and Simon Carves, began in 1957 and the facility was opened by Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother on 22 September 1964. Hunterston A had two Magnox reactors capable of generating 180MWe each. The reactors were supplied by GEC and the turbines by C.A. Parsons & Company. The main civil engineering contractor was Mowlem. The Magnox reactors used natural uranium fuel (in magnox alloy 'cans') within a graphite core, and were cooled by carbon dioxide gas. Each reactor, which consisted of more than 3,000 fuel channels, was enclosed in a steel pressure vessel. Eight boilers, known as Steam Raising Units, were located around each ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Taylor Woodrow Construction
Taylor Woodrow Construction, branded as Taylor Woodrow, is a UK-based civil engineering contractor and one of four operating divisions of Vinci Construction UK. The business was launched in 2011, combining civil engineering operations from the former Taylor Woodrow group and from Vinci UK - formerly Norwest Holst. Taylor Woodrow was one of the largest housebuilding and general construction companies in Britain. It merged with rival George Wimpey in July 2007 to create the Taylor Wimpey housebuilding group. In September 2008, Taylor Woodrow Construction was acquired by Vinci plc from Taylor Wimpey; initially branded as part of Vinci Construction, the civil engineering division reverted to the name Taylor Woodrow Construction in 2011 to reflect its civil engineering heritage. History Taylor Woodrow Early years The Taylor Woodrow business was founded in Blackpool in 1921 as a housebuilder by Frank Taylor and his uncle, Jack Woodrow, creating the Taylor Woodrow name. In 1930, Tayl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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