Winfrith Atomic Energy Establishment, or AEE Winfrith, was a
United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority
The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority is a UK government research organisation responsible for the development of fusion energy. It is an executive non-departmental public body of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy ...
site near
Winfrith Newburgh
Winfrith Newburgh (), commonly called just Winfrith, is a village and civil parish in Dorset, England. It is about west of Wareham and east of the county town Dorchester. It was historically part of the Winfrith hundred. In the 2011 Census t ...
in
Dorset
Dorset ( ; archaically: Dorsetshire , ) is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the unitary authority areas of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole and Dorset (unitary authority), Dors ...
. It covered an area on
Winfrith Heath
Tadnoll and Winfrith Heath is a nature reserve of the Dorset Wildlife Trust, near the village of Winfrith Newburgh in Dorset, England. There is heathland and wetland in the reserve.
Winfrith Heath is designated a Site of Special Scientific Int ...
to the west of the village of
Wool
Wool is the textile fibre obtained from sheep and other mammals, especially goats, rabbits, and camelids. The term may also refer to inorganic materials, such as mineral wool and glass wool, that have properties similar to animal wool.
As ...
between the A352 road and the
South West Main Line
The South West Main Line (SWML) is a 143-mile (230 km) major railway line between Waterloo station in central London and Weymouth on the south coast of England. A predominantly passenger line, it serves many commuter areas including south we ...
.
Winfrith was set up in order to test a variety of new
nuclear reactor
A nuclear reactor is a device used to initiate and control a fission nuclear chain reaction or nuclear fusion reactions. Nuclear reactors are used at nuclear power plants for electricity generation and in nuclear marine propulsion. Heat from nu ...
designs with the intention of selecting a new design for power generation and other tasks. The main design built at the site was the demonstration
steam-generating heavy water reactor (SGHWR) providing power to the
National Grid. A number of smaller designs were also constructed at the site.
The site officially opened with the ZENITH reactor in 1960. SGHWR opened in 1967 and was shut down in 1990. All of the reactors have been shut down and are in various stages of removal. The site is now being re-used for other purposes while decommissioning continues.
Nuclear research
The initial steps that led to the formation of Winfrith began with the creation of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (AEA) from the former
Atomic Energy Research Establishment
The Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE) was the main Headquarters, centre for nuclear power, atomic energy research and development in the United Kingdom from 1946 to the 1990s. It was created, owned and funded by the British Governm ...
(AERE) in 1954.
John Cockcroft
Sir John Douglas Cockcroft, (27 May 1897 – 18 September 1967) was a British physicist who shared with Ernest Walton the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1951 for splitting the atomic nucleus, and was instrumental in the development of nuclea ...
, in charge of the Research Group, immediately began pressing for a new site to be set aside for the construction of multiple experimental reactors, with the aim being to try many designs in order to develop the best possible commercial systems. This was opposed by
Christopher Hinton, of the Industrial Group, who wanted to pick a single design and focus their energies on that. Cockcroft eventually won the acrimonious argument.
The site in Dorset was selected and led to the formation of the opposition group, the Dorset Land Resources Committee, led by
Colonel Joseph Weld. The AEA were granted
planning permission
Planning permission or developmental approval refers to the approval needed for construction or expansion (including significant renovation), and sometimes for demolition, in some jurisdictions. It is usually given in the form of a building perm ...
for the development by
Dorset County Council
Dorset County Council (DCC) was the county council for the county of Dorset in England. It provided the upper tier of local government, below which were district councils, and town and parish councils. The county council had 46 elected council ...
, which was confirmed by a public inquiry, but during the process it was discovered that various
rights of common may have existed over the land. In order to enable the development to go ahead as quickly as possible, the government introduced, and Parliament passed, the Winfrith Heath Act 1957, extinguishing any rights of common over the land, and allowing for a compensation process for any commoners whose rights had been extinguished. The AEA acquired 650 acres by compulsory purchase order and another similar size through normal purchases to bring the site to 1,350 acres. To house the staff, they also purchased 153 homes in
Bournemouth
Bournemouth () is a coastal resort town in the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole council area of Dorset, England. At the 2011 census, the town had a population of 183,491, making it the largest town in Dorset. It is situated on the Southern ...
and
Poole
Poole () is a large coastal town and seaport in Dorset, on the south coast of England. The town is east of Dorchester and adjoins Bournemouth to the east. Since 1 April 2019, the local authority is Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Counc ...
for staff to rent, as well as 127 in
Weymouth, 100 in
Dorchester, 24 in
Wareham and 12 in
Wool
Wool is the textile fibre obtained from sheep and other mammals, especially goats, rabbits, and camelids. The term may also refer to inorganic materials, such as mineral wool and glass wool, that have properties similar to animal wool.
As ...
. The Durley Hall Hotel at Branksome Chine was bought in 1958 for single staff and temporary accommodation.
Construction began in 1957, and the first low-energy reactor, ZENITH, was completed and in operation by the end of 1959.
The site did not officially open until 16 September 1960. This was quickly followed by two new reactors, NESTOR in 1961 and DIMPLE in 1962.
Many others followed. Cockcroft also suggested that larger
fusion reactors
Fusion power is a proposed form of power generation that would generate electricity by using heat from nuclear fusion reactions. In a fusion process, two lighter atomic nuclei combine to form a heavier nucleus, while releasing energy. Devices de ...
be built at Winfrith, but this was met by serious pushback from the scientists involved in the programme. This work instead moved to today's
Culham Centre for Fusion Energy
The Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE) is the UK's national laboratory for fusion research. It is located at the Culham Science Centre, near Culham, Oxfordshire, and is the site of the Joint European Torus (JET), Mega Ampere Spherical Tokam ...
.
Staffing peaked at 2,350 in 1966, but the site slowly wound down and the staff was 1,800 by 1978. The largest reactor at the site (SGHWR), closed in 1990, and the site turned primarily to disposal of nuclear waste. In 1995 the eastern part of the site became the Winfrith Technology Centre, and 218 acres on the western side were decommissioned. The last reactor was shut down in 1995, although decommissioning of the site will not finish till 2021.
Winfrith housed several experimental reactors during its lifetime. There were also impact test facilities, and a used nuclear fuel examination facility with the associated hot cells.
Experimental reactors included:
*ZENITH (Zero Energy High Temperature Reactor) built in 1959. It was a zero-energy reactor which was used to study the physics of high temperature reactors.
*NESTOR (Neutron Source Thermal Reactor) built in 1961. Based on the
JASON reactor
JASON was a low-power nuclear research reactor installed by the Ministry of Defence at the Royal Naval College in Greenwich, London, now home to the University of Greenwich, to educate and train military and civilian personnel involved in the na ...
operated by the
Hawker Siddeley
Hawker Siddeley was a group of British manufacturing companies engaged in aircraft production. Hawker Siddeley combined the legacies of several British aircraft manufacturers, emerging through a series of mergers and acquisitions as one of onl ...
Nuclear Power Corporation at
Langley, Berkshire
Langley, also known as Langley Marish, is a suburb of Slough in Berkshire, South East England. It is east of the town centre of Slough, and west of Charing Cross in Central London. It was a separate civil parish until the 1930s, when the built ...
.
NESTOR was a small research reactor which produced a large amount of neutrons making it a useful tool for investigating the design of power-producing reactors and carrying out sub-critical experiments on core assemblies.
*DIMPLE (Deuterium Moderated Pile of Low Energy) built in 1962. Originally built at
Harwell Harwell may refer to:
People
* Harwell (surname)
* Harwell Hamilton Harris (1903–1990), American architect
Places
* Harwell, Nottinghamshire, England, a hamlet
*Harwell, Oxfordshire, England, a village
**RAF Harwell, a World War II RAF airfield, ...
in 1954, Dimple was Britain's first heavy water reactor. It was moved to Winfrith in 1962 and extensively modified and rebuilt for studies of the physics of reactor systems moderated by light or heavy water and by an organic moderator.
*ZEBRA (Zero Energy Breeder Reactor Assembly) built in 1962. Designed for studying the neutron physics of a wide variety of fuel assemblies containing uranium and plutonium.
*HECTOR (Hot Enriched Carbon-moderated Thermal Oscillator Reactor) built in 1963. Designed to examine the suitability of various materials for use in power reactors.
*JUNO, built in 1964. Built from the components of a zero-energy graphite moderated reactor called NERO, and from a sub-critical assembly used for steam generating heavy water reactor investigations, it was used to provide the information needed for the design of small power reactor cores.
*The
Dragon reactor
DRAGON Reactor Experiment (DRE) was an experimental high temperature gas-cooled reactor at Winfrith in Dorset, England, an experimental reactor of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (O.E.C.D) High Temperature Reactor Projec ...
was built in 1964.
It was the first power reactor built at Winfrith.
It was an experimental reactor built as a European inter-governmental research and development project.
It was the first demonstration high-temperature
gas-cooled reactor
A gas-cooled reactor (GCR) is a nuclear reactor that uses graphite as a neutron moderator and a gas (carbon dioxide or helium in extant designs) as coolant. Although there are many other types of reactor cooled by gas, the terms ''GCR'' and to a l ...
(HTGR) and had a thermal output of 20MW. It operated until 1976.
Winfrith Steam Generating Heavy Water Reactor
Design
The largest reactor at Winfrith was a
steam-generating heavy water reactor (SGHWR) commonly known as the Winfrith Reactor.
It was designed by the
UKAEA
The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority is a UK government research organisation responsible for the development of fusion energy. It is an executive non-departmental public body of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy ...
, and was intended to combine the features of the
CANDU reactor
The CANDU (Canada Deuterium Uranium) is a Canadian pressurized heavy-water reactor design used to generate electric power. The acronym refers to its deuterium oxide ( heavy water) moderator and its use of (originally, natural) uranium fuel. C ...
and
PWR.
The core consisted of a bank of metal pressure tubes (
zirconium
Zirconium is a chemical element with the symbol Zr and atomic number 40. The name ''zirconium'' is taken from the name of the mineral zircon, the most important source of zirconium. The word is related to Persian '' zargun'' (zircon; ''zar-gun'', ...
alloy) which passed through vertical tubes in a tank of
heavy water moderator – allowing the designers to do without the pressure vessel that normally contained the reactor's core.
The pressure tubes contained the fuel which was cooled by a flow of light water up the tubes, generating steam.
The fuel was slightly
enriched uranium
Enriched uranium is a type of uranium in which the percent composition of uranium-235 (written 235U) has been increased through the process of isotope separation. Naturally occurring uranium is composed of three major isotopes: uranium-238 (238 ...
.
The power level was varied by the level of the moderator.
The reactor exported up to 100MW of electric power to the
National Grid.
For many years it was the largest water cooled reactor in the United Kingdom.
History
Construction of the reactor began in 1963.
It began operating in 1967,
and was notable for being built within the allotted timescale (four years), and for being under-budget.
It was built as a demonstration reactor,
with the intention of building a series of commercial reactors based on the design.
However, the SGHWR design was never advanced beyond the prototype at Winfrith,
and the design was sidelined in favour of
AGR reactors.
The Winfrith reactor was shut down in 1990.
The site today
The site is now split between the nuclear licensed site, the extensive
Dorset Green Technology Park
Dorset Innovation Park (formerly Dorset Green Technology Park, and earlier known as Winfrith Technology Centre) is a science and technology park which is owned by the Homes and Communities Agency. The site was the former UKAEA Winfrith Atomic En ...
(formerly Winfrith Technology Centre) and the headquarters of the
Dorset Police
Dorset Police is the territorial police force responsible for policing the county of Dorset in the south-west of England, which includes the largely rural area covered by Dorset Council, and the urban conurbation of Bournemouth, Christchurch a ...
.
Ownership of the Winfrith Nuclear site has now passed to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA). The site is managed by
Magnox Limited,
who are contracted to deliver the site decommissioning programme. In 2022 over 1000 drums of
radioactive waste
Radioactive waste is a type of hazardous waste that contains radioactive material. Radioactive waste is a result of many activities, including nuclear medicine, nuclear research, nuclear power generation, rare-earth mining, and nuclear weapons r ...
from the Steam-Generating Heavy Water Reactor will be transported by 11 trains to the
Low Level Waste Repository
The Low Level Waste Repository is the UK's central long-term store for low-level radioactive waste located on the West Cumbrian coast near Drigg village and opened in 1959. It is a subsidiary of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.
Functi ...
. The material was once
intermediate-level waste
Radioactive waste is a type of hazardous waste that contains radioactive material. Radioactive waste is a result of many activities, including nuclear medicine, nuclear research, nuclear power generation, rare-earth mining, and nuclear weapons r ...
but had decayed down to
low-level waste
Low-level waste (LLW) or Low-level radioactive waste (LLRW) is nuclear waste that does not fit into the categorical definitions for intermediate-level waste (ILW), high-level waste (HLW), spent nuclear fuel (SNF), transuranic waste (TRU), or ce ...
while being stored at Winfrith.
See also
*
Nuclear power in the United Kingdom
*
Energy policy of the United Kingdom
The energy policy of the United Kingdom refers to the United Kingdom's efforts towards reducing energy intensity, reducing energy poverty, and maintaining energy supply reliability. The United Kingdom has had success in this, though energy int ...
References
Citations
Bibliography
*
*
*
External links
*
{{authority control
Energy infrastructure completed in 1959
Former nuclear research institutes
Nuclear technology in the United Kingdom
Former nuclear power stations in England
Nuclear research institutes in the United Kingdom
Nuclear weapons infrastructure of the United Kingdom
Organisations based in Dorset
Science and technology in Dorset
1959 establishments in England