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Last Operating Magnox Nuclear Reactor Closes
nojayuk writes: The world's last operating
Magnox
nuclear reactor, Wylfa 1 in Anglesey, Wales was closed yesterday
after providing carbon-free power for over 40 years. Wylfa1 was originally scheduled to shut in 2012 along with the adjacent Wylfa 2 reactor but it was kept operating for another three years with the innovative use of partially-burnt fuel from Wylfa 2 and remaining stocks of fresh Magnox fuel. The reactor will be defuelled and move into its decommissioning phase over the next year. The Magnox design used gas-cooling and a carbon moderator with the capability to produce weapons-grade plutonium depending on how it was fuelled and operated. Its design fed into the next-generation AGRs which provide about 6GW of Britain's electricity supply today.
Smart... Very smart.
Nuclear is so great because it doesn't emit nature's nutrient CO2. It does however produce toxic waste that will need to be buried and managed for the next million years and there is always risk of nuclear meltdown that can kill everyone in the area, but that's better than CO2!
Almost 45 years later, staff gathered to mark the Reactor One switch-off
reactor team so rory left on holiday for spain yesterday and told us, rite, to make sure we shut everything off before new years. so i dont know if that means the reactor too or if he wants that on...
cheeky bloke: he was a right bastard last year 'bout not turning off that kettle in the kitchen though mates...
reactor team: right right... best to shut off the ole magnox lest he send another of those fiery emails.
cheeky bloke: nobody!? right. ill get the sodding kettle then.
Good people go to bed earlier.
So I take it no concrete was used, which exudes CO2, the processing was done via carbon-neutral powered factories, transported by electric cars run off solar power and the mining of the original ore was done without the use of fossil fuel power anywhere, right?
And I take it it didn't have, as other power stations have, fossil fueled backup generators for the systems, or if it did, they were never used.
I think you're confusing terrorist groups with an entire religion of people here. A common mistake.
Being pushed and shoved by crowds of determined shoppers can leave even the calmest among us hot and bothered.
But if the stress of braving the sales isn't enough, there's something else that could be making you break into a sweat.
For despite the unseasonably warm weather, some shopping centres feel like they have their heating on at full blast.
Visitors to one shop at the Westfield centre in west London faced sweltering temperatures of 29.4C (85F) yesterday, our study found.
In many other stores, including H&M, River Island and M&S, the heat reached more than 26C (79F).
This means customers had to rifle through the racks in higher temperatures than those soaking up the sun in Sydney yesterday – where it was a balmy 25C (77F).
Conditions were not much better elsewhere; shops at the Bluewater centre in Kent reached up to 27.4C (81F), while the Trafford Centre in Manchester and Newcastle's Eldon Square saw highs of 24C (75F). The findings came as outside temperatures are up to 12C higher than normal for December.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3378217/It-s-hot-shop-Temperatures-stores-hit-30C-making-warmer-Sydney.html#ixzz3vuntk593
Much of Britain has been basking in temperatures closer to summer than winter and the fourth-warmest start to December since 1960 is set to continue, forecasters have said.
However, the mild weather is also bringing heavy rain, prompting the Met Office to issue severe-weather warnings for Friday in Scotland and much of the western UK on Saturday.
The balmy winter echoes the global trend with 2015 already declared as planet Earth’s warmest year on record. On Monday, Gavin Schmidt, the director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, tweeted that this year would be a “scorcher” compared with previous years.
And the Met Office has predicted that next year the world would be even warmer still, forecasting the global average temperature for 2016 would be between 14.72C and 14.96C, compared with the average from 1961 to 1990 of 14C.
It was mid-April in 1802 when William Wordsworth “wandered lonely as a cloud” in the Lake District and was taken by “a host of dancing daffodils”, but the flower most associated with spring has already bloomed as far north as Cheshire this winter.
In London, temperatures hit 16C today – the average for June in the city – while much of the rest of the country saw 13C to 15C. It is expected to get even warmer.
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Yay reality, not at all what you proclaim, eh?
The carbon footprint of a solar photovoltaic (PV) panel – the average level of greenhouse gas emissions it is responsible for over its lifetime – is about 72 grams of carbon dioxide-equivalent per kilowatt-hour of electricity generated (gCO2e/kWh) .
https://www.edfenergy.com/ener...
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
Is also used for termal power in long range space probes:
http://www.wired.com/2013/09/plutonium-238-problem/
"closed yesterday after providing carbon-free power for over 40 years. "
And now we only have to guard the ashes they produced for a couple of hundred thousand years.
(Disclaimer: This is my opinion)
Over the next, say, 20 to 30 years:
o Planned shutdown of current-technology Uranium-based reactors and fossil fuel-based power plants
o Continued and expanded supplementation with so-called 'renewable' sources (wind, solar, etc)
o Develop and begin deploying LFTR (thorium-based) reactors
o Continue R&D into hydrogen fusion technology, towards a commercially-viable solution
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
The wiki says that North Korea generates all of their weapons plutonium from this design, but unfortunately not go into any detail on how the plutonium is removed and purified.
I had never heard of Magnox before - it's quite interesting that non-enriched, direct ore uranium can be used as fuel. I had imagined that only a liquid salt thorium reactor could accomplish this, but it does appear that fuel reprocessing costs for Magnox are much higher.
I suppose it had reached its Zenith?
Lead. Mercury. Asbestos.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Hmm. Wylfa - will I miss it? It's the largest employer on Anglesey, giving fairly good jobs to a shedload of people. Good jobs-for-life jobs. One thing to note is that it will continue to employ a good many people for a while yet, nuclear reactors don't shut down overnight, even if they're not producing any electricity. It used to power the local aluminum smelter, the largest single customer of electricity in the UK until it shut down in 2009.
We were very proud of it growing up in the bright-eyed technologically embracing 60s to 80s. Chernobyl cast a dark shadow on the industry in 86, especially in North Wales where the fallout meant that restrictions on highland sheep farming were only lifted in 2012 (yes, 2012, think on that those that think that Chernobyl wasn't that bad - 1500 miles away farmers were restricted for for 26 years).
I'm a nuclear believer, and there are plans for Wylfa B, a new nuclear generator, which I think is already a done deal. The inhabitants of Anglesey are divided over whether it would be a good thing (employment) or a Fukushima waiting to happen, but energy planning is not devolved to the people of Wales, so it's unlikely that local opposition will carry much weight in the decision. The biggest factor is how much subsidy the (UK) government will promise the French or Chinese investors for their nuclear megawatt-hour. Hinkley Point in England has been awarded £92.50, about 2x the current price of electricity guaranteed for 35 years, and the waste problem is owned (and paid for) by the government.
The fact that companies need shoveling crazy amounts of subsidy to build any reactors with the government picking up the bill for final waste management worries me that nuclear aint the glorious shizz that I was sold as a child in the 80s. On the other hand, if the UK government are hoofing megabucks somewhere, I'd rather it went to the incredibly beautiful but poor island of Anglesey than not.