Bradwell developments (the Power Station)

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tillergirl

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For our local newspaper:

Decommissioning - The cooling ponds where the fuel rods were stored and cooled before their removal to Sellafield have been reduced from 3000 cubic meters of water to 1000. The water was passed through a filter system and monitored fr radionuclides before being released into the estuary (i.e. The Blackwater) as happened when the power station was opened. The remaining sludge left in the base of the ponds will be removed and stored in ISO containers. There is now a low level waste warehouse facility to enable on-site waste to be dealt with more efficiently. (Not sure what this means)

Baffle Wall:

Next year subject to gaining a permit, the wste management team intend to take down most of the baffle wall leaving one small section.


Rest:

A ten year programme has been agreed to remove the graphite cores from the reactors. The fuel element debris sealed in the vaults at Bradwell has so far not been removed. As this degenerates hydrogen gas can build up but this is monitored. Over the next few years, the station will pass though several procedures before reaching a 'care and maintenance' stage. Once the reactor buildings have been deplanted, the outsides will be clad in sheet metal. This is due to be completed by 2027.

Dissolution programme for FED(?) - the strategy is still being researched.

Fish Stocks

According to a 'recent report' there was an improvemen in the health of fish and oyster stocks following the shut down of the station.

This last bit is interesting. What do the fish and oysters know that we don't?

For the future:

In a letter to the Department of Energy, Spanish utility company Iberdrola, which is part of the consortium pursuing nuclear new build opporuntiites in the UK said, "We consider that the Bradwell land is sufficient for at least two or three nucleur power generating units together with any cooling towers which might be required either instead of, or in order to supplement any direct cooling....... Accordingly, a resonable easly deployment profile would see the first reactor becoming operational in 2018 o 2019 with a second in 2020 or 2012 and a possible third a year or two later."

The land is currently owned by French EDF.

The current anti-Bradwell group are suggesting that the cooling towers could be up to 650ft high and 325 ft in diameter (Bradwell is currently 140 ft high).

There is apparently according to this group a proposal to have a long term (160 year) and perhaps indefinite storage of highly radioactive spent fuel and intermediate wastes at Bradwell.
 
Why does this give me a very uncomfortable feeling?

There's a whole lot of trust that's needed in the companies dealing with this project.

I can't speak about specifics but it concerns me alot.
 
sailorman said:
I had a friend who worked for Rolls Royce, "any waste" from a radio active site was known as Low Level Waste even is it wasnt radio active
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Exactly, for example you get a parcel, take out the contents and what you're left with is low-level nuclear waste.
 
sailorman said:
I had a friend who worked for Rolls Royce, "any waste" from a radio active site was known as Low Level Waste even is it wasnt radio active
Click to expand...

It is no doubt true that if you picked through some low level waste you might find some bits that were not radioactive, simply because it would be too expensive to separate the components. However the definition of low level waste is such that some components may be quite radioactive.

It would be quite wrong to give the impression that low level waste may be innocuous.

What a blot on the landscape Bradwell will be. And presumably any other nuclear power stations built there will also end up as monumental mausoleums.
 
Fire99 said:
Why does this give me a very uncomfortable feeling?

There's a whole lot of trust that's needed in the companies dealing with this project.

I can't speak about specifics but it concerns me alot.
Click to expand...

We must bear in mind that in these reports are two agendas: The Government who have left this too late and now have to add quite quickly compressing the consultation process and trying to say as little as possible: and on the other side, the NIMBY group who try to find absolutely everything that is scary. Somewhere between the two lies the truth.

I think we can be reasonably certain of certain certainties!

1. What is there now will be an eyesore for the rest of my life.
2. There will be something new there probably within 10 years (can you have a probability within a certain certainty?)
3. The new thing will not be pretty.

What worries me is that the fish are now reported to be healthier. But maybe I'm just twitchy because the big C has been pretty active amongst friends over here in the last year.
 
tillergirl said:
But maybe I'm just twitchy because the big C has been pretty active amongst friends over here in the last year.
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But that can be said about a lot of other geographical areas too. Is the trend in the Bradwell area greater than average or is it more a factor of living longer and therefore having more time to get these diseases? I would hesitate a guess that the average age of somewhere like Mersea Island is not reflective of the nation as a whole for the same reasons as places like Eastbourne / Bournemouth etc

(Not addessed at Tillergirl in particular) Ultimately we need power or we need to change our lifestyles considerably. The view on this forum seems to be anti wind farms, anti nuclear so where is the power going to come from with diminishing fossil fuel stocks?
 
I for one would still much rather see a couple of large cooling towers attached to a Nuclear Power Station or two on the Dengie shoreline in preference to those blasted windmills cluttering up the Wallet!

Sorry, there are eyesores and there are eyesores, but that wind farm is 'orrible!!!
 
It was not intended to be an anti-nucleur statement Peter and I think we must have nucleur power. It's just that when you are a mile down wind of such a power station, it does touch your vulnerability. But it was my choice to move here and I probably should have realised that they would rebuild.

The tower threat is a worst case. As I understand it there are concerns about the sufficiency of water to cool the next generation station(s) which given the size of the Blackwater estuary is a little surprising but if that is right hence the need for tower(s) where formally none was required.

As to the fish, I think the Blackwater has been pretty clean in the past. Hence Maldon Sea Salt.
 
I'm not particularly anti Nuclear though I do have issue with the reasons why we have such great demand on Electricity. This has been a growing issue for many years and to be honest I feel it's been brushed under the carpet for too long and now it's 'panic stations'.

I do have concern that, in our current social climate, public safety may not betreated as paramount and, with the growing power demands, strict safety procedure could be at risk.

Increasing power provision should only ever work in co-operation with keeping demand in check and social responsibility.

i.e. How much of Central London is lit up like a christmas tree 24/7 when half of time (weekend + nights) it is largely deserted.
 
Theres a real problem over energy,the Goverment is trying to keep it under wraps,i think that it may be a lot worse than they are letting us know.Why are we taking the gamble on the falklands? The whole of South America is backing Argentina this time,in the late eighties the company that i worked for sent a diving team down along with some geologists,they have known about the Oil since way back,its only now that we are drilling for it and there is a real danger of a shooting war as a result.

I read very recently that the world is running out of Uranium,its estimated that current known stocks will start to run out in 30 years,maybee that they have a large pile of Uranium somewhere,other wise why are they contemplating building so many new Nuke stations

what about Sizewell A? when i worked on that one,the story was that they did not know what do do with the old reactor,there is a massive concrete wall surrounding sizewell,tarmac bought up 3 cement plants and moved them down to sizewell as they had to do it in one single pour

the problem with the old nuke stations is that we still dont know how to safely dismantle them,they will be a blot on the landscape for a couple of thousand years.

So the wind farms may not be pretty but they are a lot safer,i still think that if the gov put enough money into the research then we could use a raw energy source that never stops around the UK,s coast,The Tide, and have no large windmill sticking up out of the sea
 
We often forget what a boost to the Dengie prosperity the Nuke was when it opened.
Father in law was a farm worker who retrained as a health physics monitor [the blokes who go around checking with geiger counters]
He was quite content with th level of radiation at the plant and surrounding areas but was often worried about radiation levels in things we ignored. E.g walnuts, Tilley lamp mantles, Sestrel compasses, hospitals and Cornwall.
The press often play on the hysteria; if someone falls off their bike in Bradwell the headline will be something like " Mother in accident at Atom plant".
 
I think my views are well known. I support the building of a new station at Bradwell. They have had one before, and whilst I understand there are risks, these are considerably less than they were at the inception of the previous designs.
The area, as DanTribe has pointed out, will benefit generally and specifically.
I am unsure of the health issues, as this has not raised its head prominently for 30 years or more.

I had a Father In Law who was 2nd Engineer at Dungeness A, and I was always impressed with their attention to detail, and the sense of responsibility they seemed to have.

I think the cooling tower size is scaremongering. There would be not much benenfit to such a height, as the allowable emissions these days would be negligible and would not lend itself to a decent design for extracting and converting all energy for waste products.

The fish on Dungeness cooling grilles were delicious, and did not glow in the dark.
 
Cooling water

When the CEGB owned Bradwell, they commissinoned a survey in which most of the mersea fishing fleet were chartered and envolved. Early 1980's I think. I was part of it.

They anchored a vessel about 3/4 mile downstream from the current baffle wall (where a new one might be) and this vessel slowly dripped dye into the water for 7 consecutive days.

The other vessels had detection equipment fitted to their engine cooling water systems and recorded this concentration of dye found as they were under way.

Vessels were despatched to points far and wide from the Wash to Belgium to Dungeness. They travelled up all the Essex and Suffolk rivers. The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries research unit at Lowestoft were involved too.

Months later the Min of Ag and fish, (or the CEGB)who never officially released the findings, suggested that the results were so alarming, as to how "hot" water would spread, that all plans for Bradwell B were shelved.

Perhaps thats why cooling towers are now being suggested
 
christo2024 said:
Months later the Min of Ag and fish, (or the CEGB)who never officially released the findings, suggested that the results were so alarming, as to how "hot" water would spread, that all plans for Bradwell B were shelved.

Perhaps thats why cooling towers are now being suggested
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So no hard data as the findings weren't released?

The cooling towers (whatever shape height or diameter they are) would be part of the design solution that extracts all possible energy and scrubs the emissions.
There will still be a huge intercooler using sea water, but it will be like your boat engine - raw water cooling a heat exchanger with antifreeze in it. No actual contact.
 
I'm sorry chaps but none of this has filled me with any confidence.

With the current spiralling energy demands and the economic climate we currently live in, I would certainly be concerned about 'acceptable' colateral damage in the name of meeting demands and CO2 reduction etc.
 
There was a very interesting prog on R4 this afternoon about Fission.... its less than 20 years away as a commercial generation option according to some of the scientists interviewed...

They now can produce more power out than in.... and the hurdles to commercialising are gradually being knocked down one after another...

and its a technology that 'fails safe' rather than the less appealing China Syndrome potential behind fusion.... as well as producing a very much less dangerous by-product that besides being significantly less radioactive, also has a half life of 10 to 12 years, rather than hundreds or even thousands of years

So.... a safer nuclear future maybe?...
 
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