Magnox

New nuclear sites for Britain

Sunday, March 2, 2008

POWER companies are to be offered a new range of potential sites to construct nuclear power stations in Britain.

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), a government agency in charge of the £70 billion-plus clean-up of the UK atomic legacy, is expected to open talks shortly.

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Britain 'facing energy shortfall'

Monday, January 28, 2008

By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website

Britain is likely to face a shortfall in electricity generation within five to seven years, a report concludes. Energy and environment consultancy firm Inenco says that the number of nuclear and coal plants coming out of service over the period makes shortages likely.

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Contaminated ground

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Oct 11th 2007 , rom The Economist print editio

The shadow of an old accident haunts Britain's nuclear revival
THIS is a big week in the government's attempt to rehabilitate nuclear energy. Eight months after a court ruled that its first public consultation on whether to build more reactors had been misleading and unfair, its second attempt finished on October 10th. For a government with (until recently) a reputation for slick public relations, that date looks ill-judged. For it also marks the 50th anniversary of a fire at the Windscale nuclear reactor in Cumbria that was, until Three Mile Island in 1979, the world's worst atomic accident (the Chernobyl explosion in 1986 dwarfs both).

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Cost of nuclear clean-up rises to £73bn

Thursday, October 11, 2007

The official cost of cleaning up 20 of Britain's nuclear facilities will be more than £73bn, 16% higher than estimated last year, according to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority yesterday. The latest rise in clean-up costs came as the government completed consultation on whether to proceed with a new generation of atomic plants, with one potential operator arguing there was a "moral imperative" to allow more to be built.

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Windscale: A nuclear disaster

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

By Paul Dwyer
Producer, Windscale: Britain's biggest nuclear disaster

Fifty years ago, on the night of 10 October 1957, Britain was on the brink of an unprecedented nuclear tragedy. A fire ripped through the radioactive materials in the core of Windscale, Britain's first nuclear reactor.

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The UK’s Oldbury-2 reconnects to grid

Thursday, August 30, 2007

London (Platts)–24Aug2007The UK’s Oldbury-2 magnox reconnected to the grid August 23, operatorMagnox North said August 24. A fire and then turbine vibrations kept thereactor offline most of the time since May 30. Oldbury-2, one of the fourremaining operating magnox reactors, underwent a 23-month outage until May 27to determine the extent of graphite depletion in its core. It operated onlythree days before a May 30 fire on the non-nuclear side of the plant forcedits shutdown.

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