A nuclear reactor at Torness power plant has been shut down after a safety alert was triggered.
The incident at the plant, which is one of Scotland’s main power stations, happened just weeks after £30 million was spent on the same reactor to get it back online.
The shutdown means the power station is now only pumping out around a quarter of the energy it usually produces as the second reactor is currently working at a reduced capacity ahead of scheduled maintenance work.
EDF Energy has been forced to halt both reactors at its 1,280 megawatt (MW) Torness nuclear plant near Edinburgh after a rising tide of seaweed threatened to clog its cooling system.
Nuclear power firm British Energy looks poised to fall into foreign hands after it was reported French power giant EDF has agreed a £12.4 billion takeover of the firm.
The deal is worth 774p a share, the Wall Street Journal said, 9p higher than a rebuffed offer made in July.
Scotland's energy minister Jim Mather insisted today that "our people don't want new nuclear power and we don't need it", as he revealed new figures on renewable energy.
Speaking at the Scottish Council for Development & Industry energy conference at Murrayfield Stadium, the minister said wind farms, hydro power projects and marine renewables will mean Scotland should "comfortably" surpass its renewable energy targets set for 2011.
GREENPEACE ACTIVISTS protesting against a shipment of nuclear waste on its way to Sellafield are putting themselves at risk of death or injury, the UK nuclear security chief has warned.
Roger Brunt, the director of the government's Office for Civil Nuclear Security (OCNS), has accused the international anti-nuclear group of "recklessness" during attempts to board a boat carrying plutonium-contaminated waste from Sweden.
British Energy planned to take its Torness reactor in Scotland offline over the weekend and was not forced to do so, chief executive Bill Coley told an investor day presentation at Heysham, Lancashire Tuesday.
British Gas owners Centrica may join a £10billion consortium vying to control the UK's nuclear power plants.
Centrica hopes to lead a continental group bidding for British Energy, which runs all of the UK's nuke sites.
LONDON, Feb 21 (Reuters) - British Energy's Torness-2 nuclear power reactor stopped just after midnight on Thursday and the shutdown was unplanned, a spokeswoman for the company said.
"We are working on the restart plan," she said on Thursday. "But we will do some additional maintenance work while the unit is off."
She would not say what had caused the 625-MW reactor, one of two at the power plant in Scotland, to stop. (Reporting by Daniel Fineren)
LONDON, Jan 24 (Reuters) - British Energy's Torness-2 nuclear reactor restarted early on Thursday after tripping on Tuesday due to a faulty reading, a spokeswoman for the company said.
The 625-megawatt power plant stopped unexpectedly on Tuesday after an apparent problem in the boiler area of the power station in Scotland.
"There wasn't actually anything wrong with the plant," the spokeswoman said. "It was a spurious reading."
British Energy's nuclear plants can produce up to one fifth of Britain's power when they are all fully operational. (Reporting by Daniel Fineren)
London (Platts)--6 Dec 2007
British Energy is investigating the cause of a hydrogen leak at Torness-1 in Scotland, BE said December 6.
BE spokeswoman Sue Fletcher said the advanced gas-cooled reactor was manually tripped December 1 following indications of the leak, which is on the conventional plant main turbo-generator. She could not say how long the reactor would be offline, she said, as BE is still devising a repair and restart plan. "We are also determining whether we will take the opportunity to carry out additional maintenance work while the unit is off," Fletcher said.
